Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

"Every time I kill someone, I become more like God. Can you imagine? He creates, I take away. Maybe that’s the secret of religion, right? Maybe I’m the new God." —Bullseye (Thunderbolts #112)

"There is no god above me. And below me are only corpses… and converts.” — Daken (Dark Wolverine #84)

Daken took anything he gave, he stole more with greedy lips and hands soaked in blood, and demanded everything with steely eyes, and harsh and heady words. Bullseye wanted him to beg and offer himself, but Daken twisted his desires so that he was the one on his knees.

"You look so good there. It’s where you belong," Daken said, a breathy statement filled with lust and narcissism.

Instead of rage and humiliation, all Bullseye felt was satisfaction and amusement. Daken might claim godhood and control, but Bullseye was the one taking and devouring him. He wondered if it could be called ‘worship' as he traced the lines of Daken's perfect body with tongue and blade. If Daken was both God and worshiper to him as he prostrated himself at his altar and devoured him both as sacrament and sacrifice.

He pulled him off his feet, sending them both down in a tumble of limbs. Dark laughter passed his lips and Daken swallowed it like wine, lustful and drunk on their shared desire. Bullseye wanted to make art of him, to display him gutted and posed like a debauched Greek god soaked in the darkest of wine with his entrails like garlands on his dark brow.

Lips capture his and dark eyes glint behind darker lashes, Daken’s face was bloodthirsty as if he had read his thoughts. Bullseye drank him in and savored his taste. It felt like worship. But he didn’t know of whom. Were they both godlike or both slaves to their devotion?

"You’re mine.” The words a growl, and more reminiscent of a threat than anything else. The unsaid echo of his words, as he carved deep red lines in Daken’s skin, lies between them like a secret confession. I’m yours. Daken’s reply was in the cruel turn of his lips, the drag of claws and hands, the laughing eyes that mock him.

Bullseye claimed him fully, thrusting in deep and reveling in this body that doesn’t break but merely takes. All they do is take.

They are selfish to the core, like all gods.

Chapter Text

Karla looked up from her magazine when Ares walked in, setting it aside and indicating the seat next to her. “I’m pleased you came.”

"Summons from a fair woman are not to be ignored lightly." Ares said, looking her over with a satisfied smile. "I’ve always wished to have you but I think that you have more in mind than a bedding."

Karla raised a sculpted brow at his frankness, rewarding his honesty however with a smile. “You’re quite right. You’re more perceptive than you look, God of War.”

"Beautiful women are good for plots and schemes. It becomes you. I have little patience for them myself, having been on the receiving side."

"I do not ask for anything too arduous, Ares. And I reward my co-conspirators with my highest esteem.”

Ares smile was pleased and his gaze lingering, Karla allowed herself to appreciate him as well.  Ares was a mountain of strong muscle, a pinnacle of masculinity but without any modern insecurities or neuroses. It was… refreshing. She could never really shut down the part of her mind that picked and prodded, the psychologist in her always analyzing everyone around her reflexively. Ares, despite his violence, was sane and stable. He had none of the markers of instability that usually precipitated violence. He merely was the God of War — a force of nature rather than human psychology.

"I need an ally. Someone I can trust to be in line with my goals. We live in interesting times, Ares, and neither of our positions are secure. We both wish to fight another day, don’t we?"

"Aye." Ares agreed and placed his large hand on her thigh, Karla dragged it higher and spread her legs. He dragged off her lacy underwear, careful not to break the sheer fabric. Her eyes glinted with open satisfaction when he knelt by her feet, she wet her lips as his touched hers under the folds over her dress.

"Then let me do the tedious planning. Here is my suggestion…"

Chapter Text

"Are you sure this is going to work?" Janice asked and looked sceptically at  Fred who was standing proudly by the chalkboard drawing of his latest greatest plan.

"Absolutely!" Boomer declared. "It’s foolproof."

"Yeah, and we ain’t fools." Speed Demon agreed, despite the fact that he hadn’t listened to most of Boomerang’s plan. He’d gotten the gist of it. Hammerhead had stuff. They were going to steal the stuff. Sell it and get all the money. What else was important?

"It’s just that you’re awfully certain that he won’t have prepared for us just walking in through the back," Janice sneered and avoided rubbing her face in frustration. Smearing her make-up wasn’t really what she wanted to do, yet again. She was starting to get the feeling that her crew wasn’t the brightest.

"That’s why we have a big ole distraction at the front. Hammerhead totally underestimates us and won’t see it coming. HE thinks were stupid.” Boomer asserted confidently.

Janice stared at him. She had to admit however that so far Fred’s plans had worked out. Somehow. Against all odds and sanity. She had no choice but to take his word on it. He seemed to know what he was talking about, right?

Four hours later, running as fast as they could — her wings broken — to the getaway car and Overdrive, she swore she’d stop listening to Boomer. But they had hit the mother lode despite of the fact that shit had hit the fan even before they had set foot near Hammerhead’s storage. Hammerhead had been on site doing a business transaction and the plan ha been an unmitigated disaster — but here they were with 4mil in cold hard cash of drug money stolen off Hammerhead’s business partners.

"See? I told you guys we’d cash in!" Boomer declared once safely in the tricked-up van.

Janice bit her tongue.

Chapter Text

Lester had always seen through Daken. Past all the pleasantries, the mask of cultured humanity and the farce of control. He had seen him in all his rotten glory; he had wanted to feast on that putrid core, and to lay it bare at his feet for the world to see.

From day one, when Norman assembled his Avengers, Lester had smelled the decay of the mutant like a ripe veil of death and sadism. He hadn’t been fooled, he had even felt charitable enough to bring it to Norman’s attention, but, like Cassandra, his warnings had fallen to deaf ears. In the long run, that had mattered little. Like any good monster, Daken had prepared for the eventuality. Lester had appreciated that in his own way. He had also wanted to cut him to pieces and bleed him out, to drink it all in like the fermented intoxicant it was, and finally be rid of the stench of him that lingered in his mind.

The contradiction of his own thoughts brought a dark chuckle to his lips and made his fingers and toes curl and stretch in a convulsive movement. Heavy and deliberate, he rolled onto his belly on his bed, rolling shoulders and neck as he went. Too sharp noises of metal against metal pop and crack in the movement.

Daken, with his needlessly pretty mask of personhood, was a constant source of internal conflict and contradiction. He loathed him but the mutant filled his thoughts and intertwined everything with his damn stench and smug smirking. It felt physical. It felt like the mutant was touching him with every look and every thought. He resented that kind of intimacy. The only intimacy he craved for was to carve Daken’s lying face off him like the mask it was. To uncover just how rotten and broken he was and to leave it on display to be picked clean by vultures. He wanted to break him and to taste the moment of his unraveling, to see the monster out in pure daylight and mounted like a damn trophy to celebrate his skill. He desired an audience. 

Violence burned hot behind his eyelids and coiled in his belly like a poison. Bullseye fantasized of being elbow deep in blood and hands around his throat. A dull ache filled him and a low groan escaped his mouth like a filthy secret. Norman was keeping his leash tight, confining him in the Tower between missions — it was suffocating without the delirious high of true violence. Black lacquered nails and claws the color of soot and rusted blood, ferrous to the touch and scent, play across his skin as he closed his eyes, leaving invisible but so tangible trails in his mind. He wanted to kill Daken for this intrusion alone.

He denied the hardness pressing against the sheets, resisted the urge to rid himself of it with a practiced hand or the base reflex of grinding down like a needy animal. He pressed his face into his pillow, letting his naked body relax even as sweat ran down him in rivulets. It felt like blood on his too hot, too cold skin, and he knew that his own scent was driving him mad. Desire and the acrid stench of his medication roll off him in waves, and ghost touches run along him as his senses fail to understand what his body was telling him. He breathed it all in and tasted the iron in his mouth.

Shivers ran down his spine, making him arch unwillingly and his nails scrape across cool sheets. He had laughed at the thread count - helpfully provided by Daken’s incessant hedonistic whining - but it felt good on his skin and he appreciated having a good bed that could take some weight. The thought of putting it to the test filtered across his mind accompanied by the same ghost of Daken’s hands and the rake of claws on flesh.

Bullseye snarled, his breath hot and wet against his face, and hated with a deeply seated and blood-soaked fury. He thought of Daken’s carefully arranged appearance and demeanor, and how it would fall apart in the right circumstances. His treacherous body wanted those circumstances to be when Daken fucked him into this very mattress.The thought sent shocks through him and had him lifting his hips and spreading his thighs. The movement had cold air touching fever hot flesh and sent his imagination on yet another flight of lunacy. Daken’s mouth on him. Daken’s claws raking his thighs. Blood flowing down his skin, hot and sticky.

His heart was a drum in his ears, his breathing like bellows, with the faint noises around him crafting the illusion of the presence of another. He shivered and gasped, pressing his forehead into the pillow, resisting the paranoid urge to look around.  Sickness in the back of his throat, the tickle of fear behind his eyes and the intoxicating scent of sickly sweetness and predatory animal — Daken’s damn stench — that clung to everything that had ever come in touch with the man.

Bullseye had done so one time too many.

He tried to cling to thoughts of blood and death but his need was too pressing; with a sense of shame and vileness, Lester slipped his hand down and took himself in hand. He swallowed the noises that threaten to betray him, and it was resentfully that he thrust into his own grip, still posed as if he expected, and wanted, the other man to walk in and fuck him — or worse yet, to watch him in his desperation and need. The spike of arousal has him jerking and vainly clawing the bed, brining him closer.

Thoughts of cool hands on him and pressure on resisting flesh bursting like overripe fruit in red, cold bone cutting into him and peeling him apart and filling him, race through his mind. He suckled two of his fingers slick and pressed them inside himself, a poor facsimile of the desired act, and fucked himself harshly as he jerked off. His breath coming in anguished puffs, he felt himself lose himself in the pleasure and low grade pain, but it wasn’t enough to exorcise the still lingering ghost of the mutant.

Bullseye swore that he’d kill Daken for having the gall to haunt him while alive. He’d sink his teeth into his throat and fuck himself on him as he bled to death beneath him. He hissed as the angle and his own impatience hurt him but it only served to spur him in his desire.

His head felt light, regardless, his thoughts refused to become empty and circle around Daken like carrion-eaters around a fresh kill. Base scavengers of the necrotic flesh of beauty that Daken wore. He wanted to kiss and tear those pink lips, always twisted in cruel smiles, and to cut those high cheekbones framing his face, and to watch life flicker out of his laughing eyes under long lashes. Darkened hands wrap themselves around his throat and sick poison slips into his mouth, wet and putrid.

Shuddering and staring down into his pillow, Lester forced reality to assert itself, skin crawling and muscles quivering. He won’t lose to the mere thought of the man. Taking control, remembering to breathe, he loosed his grip of himself to a less convulsive hold and a more measured pace. He ached, from his own violence, the static position, and the overwhelming need. He couldn’t stop and he couldn’t change the nature of his desire.

Surrender seemed to be the only choice, but he recoiled from the very notion, which inevitably made it cement itself in his head. Offering himself up like this, having Daken look on with those pitiless eyes and the quirk of a smile playing across his mouth. It made his body flush and his cock twitch. He wouldn’t know if Daken would join him or not. If he would merely silently watch him, or goad him mercilessly with words and fuck him with his cock, fingers, and, oh God, claws. Bullseye sobbed and came in long spurts, fingers knuckle deep in his own ass, with his consciousness nearly slipping away from him in white hot pleasure.

Breathless, fingers slipping free and wiping himself off on the sheets, Bullseye finally sagged down in relief on the bed, his stiff body protesting at the movement. He would be working that ache out for days. The familiar sickness settled over him, the loathing and resentment at the pit of his stomach, but it has no bite in the vacuity of his thoughts. He breathed in the smell of sex and rubbed his face into his drool stained pillow, it only served to smear the spittle on his face. He needed a shower. 

Absentmindedly, Lester cataloged the sensations that needle him. The emptiness of his insides to the iron in his mouth, the drying come and sweat on his skin to the ache of his hands. But reality felt to fluid to hold on to. He doesn’t look behind him at the empty room but merely listened to the self-satisfied smile on Daken’s face, the figment of a butterfly kiss at the nape of his neck and the appreciative caress across his back down to his ass. A sigh left him and he relaxed into the bed, heavy and sated.

Chapter Text

"Don’t fucking touch me." Johnny took a step back as if burnt, but not by heat, which is a second skin to him, but by glacial frost, at Daken’s tone and eyes.

His hand still hovered in the air, mere inches from the other man, and he could nearly feel him. But Johnny knew then, with bone deep certainty, that he would lose his hand if he lay it on Daken’s shoulder. A part of him thought that it might be worth it. But it would be a cold comfort in the face of the judgment in Daken’s gray eyes, every hint of blue lost to the world with the darkness he was draped in.

Words choke in his throat, and he wanted to burn it all away, to have his friend back instead of the man standing in front of him. He wasn’t strong enough for him — he should have known before it all broke to pieces. He should have been there and done something. He should have convinced him that there was more to everything. More to them. More to him.

Johnny knew that there weren’t any words he could say to change his mind.

"Flame on." The phrase a habit rather than a necessity. He burnt brightly, Johnny could see the flames reflected in Daken’s eyes without giving them any warmth. The other man was a predator soaked in shadow and flame; Johnny accepted this for the first time. He felt a detached sense of horror as he leaned forward, and with a sick hiss of flesh to fire, kissed Daken.

There weren’t any words, there had never been any words.

Chapter Text

Wade holstered his weapons with an elaborate dance move, gliding gracefully from a one-handed handstand to a somersault and disarming as he went. “—and that’s how you kick ass.”

"Well done," Cable grunted and let the corner of his mouth quirk a fraction at the theatrics of his old friend.

"That’s all I get?" Wade said, affronted and planting both hands at his hips. "I just took out a room full of nondescript but deadly mooks and all I get is a well done? I’m affronted, affronted I tell you, Priscilla."

Cable flashed him the same not-smile and inclined his head at the door, which hopefully would take them out of the complex. Wade bounced through the bodies, playing what looked like a game of the floor is lava, all while singing some song that Cable had never heard before. It had something to do with anacondas but he was certain that he was missing something — the instinctive mental touch gave him quite the visual experience. He scoffed a half-laugh and he controlled his breathing as he followed the impulsive mercenary.

Guns at the ready, as his pscionic abilities were stretched thin as they were, he cleared the spaces, fighting off tunnel vision. Wade was taking out security with a boneless ease, his battle tactics subscribing to no and every school, his mind a bright beacon of erratic thought. The sound of his ridiculously hollow Demi Moore rumble a comfort and a guiding light. He had once called it the sweetest sound he’d ever heard, he still stood by that statement.

Holding on to consciousness, Cable walked into the sunlight and faltered. Wade’s masked face was suddenly at eye-height and he was still talking, but Cable had a hard time hearing the words in that gravelly voice, he forced himself to focus with an effort of sheer will.

"Shit, are you bleeding? Why thank you Captain Obvious, of course he’s bleeding, it’s not like robots bleed or that Nate here carries donor bags or Tabasco on him." Wade chattered and his hands where pressed to his body, searching for the injury and applying pressure. "I don’t have bandages on me but I do have duct tape. I guess it’s my turn to pay you back for all the times you’ve duct taped me, eh? And don’t worry, I won’t leave you like that until nature calls."

"Wade—"

"You’re gonna be fine. I’m great with duct tape. Don’t gonna let you die again. You do that too often."

"Wade—"

"No, don’t you dare say something noble and shit—”

“Wade.”

"Yeah?"

"Body-slide by two."

"Oh right!"

Chapter Text

The battle field was a mess. Too many combatants and too little space; friendly fire was the least of their concerns yet one of the most common. Frankly speaking, the Avengers were getting pummeled and were only standing thanks to Ares and Sentry, who were stemming the tide enough to barely avoid casualties on their side.

Bullseye dragged Daken’s torn body away from the clamor and the battle, and had it been anyone other than Daken, Bullseye would have written him off as dead. There was just so much blood and he was certain that he dropped pieces of the mutant as they went.

"C’mon, fuckhead. Hang in there, I’m not picking that up." Bullseye snarled and dragged him along, he didn’t weigh much for a buff dude, especially not when a lot of him was a bloody smear on the ground.

A part of him didn’t understand why he bothered, but it did give him an excuse to get a breather from the carnage. Huh, there was a thing he’d never thought to want. However, his skill set wasn’t that useful against the nominally undead; arrows or any projectiles didn’t bother them the slightest and he did only have so many explosive tipped ones with him. A close quarters fight wasn’t to be thought of — he wasn’t stupid.

It had been beautiful though, and what Daken had done, throwing himself in like that, had been admirable despite the outcome. Perhaps that was why he bothered, Daken understood killing — what it was like to be a god among men.

Bullseye quirked a smile at his own thoughts, adjusting his grip on the smaller man and throwing him over his shoulders and cleared the perimeter in a quick rush to avoid any fire — friendly or otherwise. Daken didn’t make a sound and merely bled on him, however all his limbs were still attached so Bullseye didn’t feel concerned about his survival. He had done worse to him and the fucker had been up and around barely a day later. He’d be fine.

When Bullseye dropped him down on the ground, away from the battle, there was a sickening wet noise and he could see organs that really ought to stay inside fall out. Oops.

He sneered at the smell, ruptured intestines were foul things, kneeling and stuffing best as he could Daken’s insides back where they belonged. He had nothing to wrap around him and medics were nowhere to be seen. Frowning, Bullseye tried to apply pressure on his abdomen, keeping everything in until Daken’s mutant flesh knitted itself together again. He should just leave him to it, Bullseye told himself but regardless he stayed.

Slowly but visibly, Daken started to look less like a piece of bloody minced meat and life was returning to him. Bullseye let out a breath and settled next to him, lighting a cigarette and pulling his knees up and resting his elbows on them. He felt exhausted, more so than the battled warranted for. There was just not much art in killing what was already dead.

Dragging in smoke, he idly watched reenforcement join the fray, giving a little wave when they gawked at him and Daken. The little toy soldiers blanched at the sight of the gore — you’d nearly think that Ozzies little boys and girls had never seen a spleen before. Bullseye resisted the urge to throw bits and pieces of Daken at them. It wouldn’t be tasteful, he decided.

The rasping breath and faint whimper next to him drew his attention back to the mutant. He observed with mild curiosity how pain translated and spread on Daken’s semi-conscious face. The wrinkles that built and how blood, tears and filth ran down his face, the half open mouth that was still missing half a cheek, barring teeth in an unnatural snarl, and the way Daken’s eyelashes fluttered across his high cheek. Initially, he become noisier and more expressive in his agony but then it reached a point where everything just shut down. Bullseye was fascinated by this display and a little impressed, considering that it would still take hours for Daken to have a semblance of his normal self.

To be honest, he had never really understood the boundaries of the mutant’s ability to regenerate. He’d seen him walk through explosions and be fine minutes later, but he’d also observed him take mere cuts that took hours to heal. Bullseye had never identified the pattern that decided on how fast or well Daken could heal. He suspected that blood loss figured into it somehow but it could impossibly be the whole equation. Bullseye decided that one day he would take matters into his own hands in the most literal way possible and find out.

He whistled a tune he hadn’t heard for decades, pausing only to take a drag every now and then or to light a new cigarette.

Glancing down at his team mate, he could see that the mutant was shivering and convulsing. Small hitching noises and gasps left him, and now that most of his face had grown back this became more disturbing than before. He looked frail, which was just plain wrong. Bullseye wanted to snap at him to stop pretending to die and to get his damn shit together. It gnawed at his brain in places where he didn’t care for and he wanted to blame Daken for everything. To shout and hurt just to make him stop it.

Bullseye crushed his cigarette on the dusty ground by his feet and covered his face with his hands, rubbing his eyes and trying to breathe evenly. Thoughtlessly, he smeared blood on his already filthy face, though some flaked off as it chafed against the leather and his stubble. He needed a shave, it felt disgusting not to and it was already starting to itch.

Daken whimpered pitifully. Bullseye stared out into their surroundings, half an ear cocked at the battle. He was pretty sure that was Ares with a damn grenade launcher who just blew shit up. He should rejoin them, if just to see the God of War in action.

Daken mumbled unintelligibly in Japanese and tried, and failed, to do something, hissing in pain at the movement. Bullseye didn’t know what he’d said but could guess well enough, the injured weren’t the best conversationalists as pain tended to make a person rather single-minded. He grimaced and sat down fully, letting his long legs stretch. Bullseye tolerated the mutant continued noises and mumbling until he felt like he either needed to kill him or to fix him. He couldn’t do either.

"Shh, c’mere…" Bullseye urged, grabbing his by a mostly healed side and shuffling them together, Daken’s head resting on his shoulder and his arm wrapped around him. "Shut up now, okay. You’re gonna be fine."

Daken settled somewhat, though Bullseye wasn’t even sure if he was conscious or ever had been. “You gonna be ok.” He tapped the cigarette pack, taking the cigarette with his lips and lightning it with a shaky hand. Too much nicotine, he chided himself but continued to smoke.

Minutes rolled by and Bullseye smoked his way though the entire pack, Daken still firmly nestled in the crook of his arm and pressed close to his chest. The man had gone completely dead to the world again.

The noise and general mayhem around the settled slowly; incoming reenforcement became outgoing injured and already shell-shocked soldiers. Super hero shit wasn’t for the faint-hearted, and if you couldn’t take a few zombies you were really in the wrong biz.

"You’re a fucking asshole," Mac spat at him as he lumbered out from the field, his body still misshapen and huge from the symbiote. "Making us do all the work."

"I and my buddy here needed a smoke break," Bullseye announced cheerfully, grabbing Daken’s limp hand and waving with it at Mac. At least it was attached to the mutant, he noted.

"Ugh, gross," Mac sneered.

"Hey, don’t knock it. He’s great company when your spared the talking — if a bit smelly. Besides, I’ve seen you eat worse." Bullseye quipped and tried not to instinctively clutch Daken tighter and to take a knife to Mac’s throat.

"I didn’t eat anyone. Zombies are disgusting."

"Enough with the chit chat, boys. Osborn wants us to head home," Karla snapped at them as she flew in, as she noticed Daken she looked relieved. "Great that you got him, I was worried that we’d have to spend the rest of the day trying to figure out what pieces are him. I have an appointment that I’d have hated to miss.”

"Yes, ma’am." Bullseye saluted her with a grin, standing up and dragging Daken back over his shoulders.

Karla gave him a look and planted her hands on her barely covered hips. “You do know we have people for that.”

"Felt like the work-out," Bullseye said.

"Men," she sighed and left, Mac bounded after her like a large and slobbery puppy.

"Let’s go, shitface. Can’t keep Normie waiting." Bullseye muttered and longed for another cigarette, readjusting the inert weight over his shoulders. He was going to be fine.

Chapter Text

Bullseye stared at the rag in his hands, it took him several moments to process what he was seeing. It was stained in blood and what looked like motor oil and grease.

With a sense of bemusement, he looked around and realized that he was in an unfamiliar bathroom tiled a dingy greenish white, stained in filth and now blood. His hands were still smeared in the stuff and, as he looked into the cracked mirror, so was his face — a thin mist with larger blotches on his cheek. The spatter was consistent with throw back from blunt force trauma. Apart from the disorientation, he felt physically fine. No injuries poked at his attention, leaving ample room for the creeping sense of terror and nausea.

He didn’t know where he was. He didn’t know whose blood was on him or how it got there. His chest and throat tightened rapidly, forcing him to lean on the cracked sink to catch his breath. Blood dripped down on greasy white porcelain and down the drain. He felt sick at the sight of it. Turning on the tap, Bullseye washed his hands and face vigorously. He couldn’t do much about his clothes.

In fact, he was startled to see that he was in his civvies — a plain t-shirt, hoodie and jeans with a baseball cap perched on his head. He could distinctly remember putting on his ludicrous costume that morning. He had no memory of removing it. He had no memory of anything after breakfast at the Tower. He had been arguing with Mac about the latest game. He had had bacon and eggs for breakfast. He’d goaded Hand and complained about being cooped up. He had blacked out. The thought made him nauseous again, and he rushed out of the bathroom without further thought.

He didn’t feel surprised when he realized that he was in a small time auto shop. The motor oil and grease had been hints enough. It shop seemed devoid of all life. Merely a trail of blood that led behind the soccer mom Honda hinted at there had ever been anyone there. Drawn to it like an addict, Bullseye followed the trail to find the body of a mechanic leaning against the back tire. His head had been bludgeoned in and a huge wrench was still stuck in his skull. His, strangely clean, name tag announced him as Fred.

"Hi, Fred." Bullseye greeted him, his voice thick and broken in his own ears. Fred didn’t reply. Bullseye could easily recognize his own handiwork — his own artistic flair, if you will. But he didn’t remember making it. The body was fresh and the pool of blood was still spreading across the floor, slowly seeping toward the drain.

Steadier on his feet than he expected, Bullseye walked away from the late Fred to look for any stragglers. No witnesses, a voice that sounded far too much like Norman urged him and he did a full tour of his own crime scene.

In the booth, which functioned as an office, there was another body. This time he had to wipe off the blood to read the name: Sam. Sam had had his neck broken, after he’d taken a good beating. Sam’s smashed face was no more familiar to Bullseye than Fred had been. Calmly, Bullseye walked out of the makeshift office and vomited on the greasy and oil stained floor outside. Dry heaving and spitting, Bullseye tried to steady himself. The fact remained: he’d blacked out.

A pitiful whine left him and dread filled him.

He needed to get out.

He needed a damn doctor who’d either give him a damn MRI or drug him until he was himself again. He refused to go back to not knowing what he’d done one moment from another, not being able to tell hallucinations from reality and not being able to trust himself. He’d rather eat a bullet than go back to that.

He glanced at the cars and the lone bike parked in the shop and toyed with the idea of just taking a set of keys. The fear of having another black out reared its ugly head and Bullseye couldn’t risk waking up wherever as lost as he already was — he needed a ride. Fumbling and shaking, Bullseye rummaged his pockets, looking for his phone and hoping that he’d had the presence of mind to take it with him. He was lucky and found it in his jacket pocket. Another wave of terror and sickness filled him as he stared at his contacts list.

He didn’t know who to call.

He couldn’t, wouldn’t, call Norman and to tell him that he was nuts. Weeks ago he would have called Wilson. Wilson wouldn’t have cared about shit or expected jack from him, but the merc with the mouth had, as requested and paid for, gone into hiding. The hilariously bad idea of just calling a cab struck him and Bullseye laughed at the notion of hailing down a cab covered in blood from the very scene of the crime he was trying to escape. NYC cabbies might be wiling to ignore most things but that would have been pushing his luck too far. Which left him with his team mates, and those assholes would either rat him out to Norman or he’d owe them a favor that would hang over his head like a death sentence.

His fingers shook and he forced himself to dial a number. Better the devil you know, Bullseye told himself with a faintly hysterical giggle, sweating bullets as he waited for the call to connect.

"This is decidedly unexpected, though not unwelcome.” Daken’s smooth voice said in an amused tone that hinted at more.

"Fuck you." The words left him unbidden and Bullseye bit at his own tongue. He couldn’t afford this — not now. He needed him too much.

Daken clicked his tongue with disappointment, and Bullseye could just see the mocking affront on his smug face. “Is that any way to greet someone?

Tasting bile and forcing his breathing to be steady, Bullseye swallowed the insults and the anger. “Please come get me.” Stunned silence met him and he had to fight the urge to close the connection. He needed him, he reminded himself. God, if the faggot refused he’d feed him his own liver.

"I’m guessing asking why would be a waste of my time."

Bullseye reminded stubbornly silent.

"Where?" Was all Daken asked after several moments, and Bullseye felt such relief that he nearly thanked him. He opened his mouth only to realize that he still had no clue of where he was — hell, he didn’t even know if he was still in the city. Frantically looking around the auto shop, Bullseye searched for an address or a business card or something that would tell him where the fucking hell he was.

"Calm down." Daken told him on the phone. The order didn’t make any sense to him until he realized that he was practically hyperventilating. "Listen to me and calm down, Lester. Look at your phone’s gps system. Then tell me where you are."

Why hadn’t he thought of that? Bullseye fiddled with his phone, trying several times to get the damn thing to do what he wanted until he got the address. "Champion Auto Repair, 25th street. Long Island City." Bullseye blurted out, hoping that Daken was still on the line.

"I’ll come quietly. Get cleaned up if you need to. Close the shop if you can. I’ll be there soon." Daken told him very evenly, rightly assuming some of what had happened. "Do you want me to stay on the line?"

Bullseye didn’t know what he wanted. What he needed was an out and Daken was providing that. He was certain that the mutant would tidy everything up as if nothing had happened, that he could just dump this entire mess on him and stop caring because Daken was dealing with it. The strange trust this implied had him reeling with paranoia and self-loathing.

"Lester? Stay with me. I’m en route." Bullseye barely noticed that  the other man was still speaking and closed the call. Mechanically, he went out of the shop side and locked the door behind him, grabbing a discarded jacket as he went using it to cover up the worst of the bloody mess. The waiting room was blissfully empty and he made sure to turn the open sign to closed and to lock the door behind him.

It was broad daylight outside and he was left loitering right in front of the auto shop, blood still staining his shoes and jeans. It might have looked a bit like oil, or other unidentified filth, together with the repair shop jacket with its plain logo. Bullseye didn’t know how much time he lost just waiting for Daken to arrive, he merely stepped into the car was it rolled up on the street. Daken was looking as neat and tidy as he always did behind the wheel of the Mercedes.

"Do I need to worry about anything?" Daken asked.

"Just drive. Two bodies. My DNA and prints all over the place. Cops will just rubber stamp it as a Bullseye case and leave it to rot." Bullseye said. Mercifully, Daken just drove and didn’t ask any more questions.

Bullseye itched and felt sick to his stomach, acid in his throat and panic in his chest. He looked at Daken’s strong hands on the steering wheel, his nails manicured and lacquered a shiny black, obfuscating the fact that he could easily kill with those hands. With a growing sense of revulsion, he looked out of the darkened window and leaned his head against the glass. It had started to rain.

"I don’t remember killing them." The words crept out of his mouth like vile creatures, threatening to choke him on it.

"Has that happened before?" Daken asked without letting anything show beyond mild curiosity.

"Yes. When I had a tumor." Bullseye confessed, eyes locked on the city outside, they were getting stuck in traffic as they neared the bridge to Manhattan. He felt like he was drowning in his own sweat.

"I see." Daken hummed and turned on the radio. A low down techno beat filled the car, and it felt strangely calming. Bullseye wanted to tell Daken what he’d done. He wanted to tell him everything if only to make it all go away. He chewed on his lips and closed his eyes, listening to the beat and the noise of the traffic and people outside, which felt strangely distant to the little bubble around him and Daken.

At the Tower there would be tests and drugs, but right now he felt at peace for the first time since this nightmare began. He could feel and hear Daken right next to him, his presence was warm and distinct in a way that he could never articulate. While it normally set his teeth at an edge, now it made him feel secure. He felt like he was falling asleep. Drowsy and relaxed, Bullseye turned to face Daken, studying his profile; the slight curve of his nose, the soft turn of his lips, the hard edge of his jaw. He had recently shaved, his mohawk artfully styled and, if Bullseye wasn’t mistaken, he’d even put on eyeliner. Prissy fuck, he scoffed to himself.

Impulse had him leaning over and grabbing Daken harshly by the jaw at the next traffic jam. Slight alarm then suspicion flashed through the fucker’s cold eyes, carelessly, Bullseye pressed their mouths together. His lips were soft and dry, the scrape of his own five o’clock shadow harsh. It felt more real than anything that had happened to him all day.

"Tell anyone and I’ll not only kill you but make it last for so long that you forget that you even knew a world without pain." Bullseye breathed into Daken’s lips, the other man quirked a smile and raised an eyebrow at him. He didn’t laugh. Had he Bullseye would have, just to start with, introduced his face to the windshield and then the gear shift.

"You have my word." Daken said with that same smile on his lips, his head cocked slightly toward him and slow languid look in his eyes under his dark brow.

Bullseye nodded to himself and let him go, curling up in his seat and leaning back against the window. He embraced the calm drowsiness and let himself slip into a half dreaming state. He trusted Daken to keep to his word.

Chapter Text

The air-conditioning was broken and the morning sun heated up the room into a warm haze. Waking in fits, Bullseye shifted in the bed, tossing and turning until sleep was lost. The sheets were twisted around his legs and felt far too warm and stuck to his skin with sweat.

Rubbing his face and yawning, Bullseye sat up and glanced down at the still sleeping form of Daken sprawled next to him on his back, naked and uncovered. He couldn’t get how the mutant could sleep through right about anything. Hell, he didn’t get why he was sleeping with him. He tried to attribute it all as a sex thing.

He was Bullseye, he could fuck whoever or whatever he wanted.

But it wasn’t just a sex thing. He didn’t like thinking about it too much though.

The way Daken smiled when he killed a man. The way he hated when that smile was directed at someone who didn’t die for it. The way he always expected Daken to be there at his six.

Staring aimlessly into the air, feeling the sweat run down his back and listening to the sound of Daken breathing, Bullseye counted the ways he could kill him.

Daken shifted onto his side, his hand settling where Bullseye had been moments ago. His sleep mussed mohawk flopped into his face and his brow furrowed. Bullseye could have sworn he saw disappointment in Daken’s face at his absence. He wondered if it was faked for his benefit.

It was all fake and lies.

With a sinking feeling in his gut and a pressure on his throat, Bullseye turned and leaned down on one arm, pressing a kiss to Daken’s lips. The other man’s dark lashes fluttered and his gray eyes opened at a slant as he kissed him back sleepily. With that, there was hunger and Bullseye grabbed Daken by the back of his neck, open mouthed and forceful he kissed him.

Waking fully with a muffled laugh, Daken indulged him and sucked at his tongue and lips. His eyes glistened darkly with amusement, still a bit heavy with sleep, and he arched up toward him. Bullseye paused to breathe, still clutching Daken and tense with emotion.He liked Daken’s smell in the mornings, before showers and whatever shit he put in his hair to style it, it felt alive and real.

"Good morning to you too," Daken hummed and nibbled at Bullseye’s lower lip playfully, following it up with planting a kiss on the corner of his mouth.

Never leave me. I’ll kill you if you do.

He kissed him, tried to make him understand with lips, tongue and teeth. His hands grabbed and pulled at Daken’s body, pulling him up to his knees, wanting more and clenching hard enough to bruise. Daken laughed and kissed him back, arching into his touch and deliberately squirming.

Bullseye growled into the kiss, biting at Daken’s swollen lips, and grabbed him by the ass. Daken mock whined at the bite and rolled his hips, pressing himself against Bullseye in a decidedly distracting way. His skin felt too smooth for a man, making the few areas where he did have hair seem and feel strangely enticing.

Bullseye slipped a hand between their bodies, taking both of them in his hand and stroking languidly. Daken’s hair tickled against his hand and he hardened in his grip in a satisfying way. Daken moaned and kissed him, hanging onto his mouth as he thrust into his grip, his hands settled on Bullseye’s biceps.

I’ll kill you.

Daken moaned as Bullseye bit down on his shoulder hard and hardened his grip, quickening his pace. Kissing, sucking and biting the red mark, Bullseye jerked the both off them off until he could feel Daken coming with a heartfelt groan. Shifting hands on his own cock, Bullseye brought up his cum covered hand to Daken’s mouth who took the proffered fingers in his mouth, licking and sucking. 

Bullseye nearly came at the sight and feel of it but deliberately held back, slipping his fingers out and forcing his tongue into Daken’s mouth instead. Daken tasted of his own come. Bullseye came violently, clutching Daken’s face with his slick wet hand and drowning himself in Daken’s mouth until it became hard to breathe.

Don’t leave me

Chapter Text

Karla was sunbathing on the roof, in her white bikini, sunglasses and a big floppy hat, when suddenly something was in the way of her light. Initially, she ignored it, hoping that whomever it was they had the common decency to fuck off. The same shadow remained.

It wasn’t Bullseye or Daken, those two couldn’t keep their mouths shut or hands off, and Norman usually sounded irritated even when he wasn’t talking. Victoria would have been tapping her heels. Ares you could smell. Noh-Varr was missing. Sentry didn’t interact with anyone who wasn’t Norman. Which left only one possible option.

"You’re in my light, Mac." Karla said and flicked her hair.

"I-I’m s-sorry." Mac stuttered and shifted to the side. His shadow now covered her left side instead of her right. Karla sighed, tipped her glasses down to her nose and gave Mac a look. He squirmed in a way that was almost endearing.

"What is it, Mac?" Karla asked after several more moments of watching him fidget.

"I-I-I w-wondered if you wanted some company?" Mac asked in an awkward stutter. His medication must have been upped again, Karla assessed quietly, he didn’t usually stutter — not even when he was under stress. Best thing she could do was ignore the fact that he was. Unless she wanted to make it worse of course, but that held no amusement or gain to her at the moment.

"Sit down, Mac.” She dismissed him and closed her eyes, stretching back in her lounge chair once she could feel his shadow off her.

It was an enjoyable few minutes before she could hear Mac fidget in the chair beside her. She could tell him to leave. But then again she could also take advantage of the situation.

"Mac, could you put some lotion on my legs?" Karla asked and glanced at him over her big, tinted sunglasses. Mac flushed and scrambled for the sun lotion, kneeling by her lounge chair but then hesitating and looking up at her for confirmation. Karla nodded and offered her leg, nudging him gently with a red lacquered toe. Mac rubbed in the sun lotion gently, massaging her foot as he did, his brow slightly furrowed in focus. He was good with his hands.

"Thank you, you’re so sweet." She said and offered him her other foot. He flashed her an awkward smile, happy to oblige her.

Karla observed him languidly, amused by this “new” Mac Gargan and his chemical choke chain. She couldn’t see the symbiote but it was there, always there and a possible threat; she wondered what it wanted with her. Probably to eat her. Mac’s infatuation on the other hand was painfully obvious. Then again, he’d had a thing for her ever since they’d been in the Masters of Evil for the five seconds that that had lasted. Karla preferred this version of him - much easier to control, despite the symbiote.

"Could you do my back as well?" Karla asked with a happy sigh, turning onto her belly with a lingering gaze at Mac, who was by now flushing and grinning like an idiot. Smiling still, Karla untied her bikini top, removed her hat and settled down.

"Ooh, that feels wonderful.” She said happily as Mac massaged the lotion into her back, hands running up and down her spine.

"I heard that Norman has been benching you in favor of the others. Ah. I think that’s such a shame.” Karla said, enjoying the rub down Mac was giving her shoulders.

"You shouldn’t let him set you aside like that. You’re an asset, Mac. Norman needs to realize that." She continued. Mac stilled briefly before continuing working at her shoulders, rubbing tight circles.

"C-can’t do much about that." Mac grunted, his stutter easing up slightly.

"Show him how good you are, take initiative.” Karla advised and made a point of arching her back slightly to enhance the curve. “You’re more than capable. Bullseye and Daken have nothing compared to you.”

"Yeah. I’m totally b-better than those freaks.” Mac agreed happily and kneaded her back with new vigor, drifting closer to her ass than absolutely necessary. She let him get away with it for now. Stroking his ego was child’s play.

"Naturally." Karla said in her most sultry voice. It would do her good to have the competition between her esteemed colleagues running a bit hotter. Daken’s little games had been disrupting her enough as it was, what with his indiscretions and playing the rest of the team like fiddle. He was making her feel territorial. She did not enjoy being cornered.

"Why don’t you show Norman just how much better you are?" Karla suggested breezily, as if it was little concern to her, sighing a little at Mac massaging her neck. Mac swallowed it hook, line and sinker.

It didn’t take much more pushing from her, to get him to formulate some completely hair-brained scheme. With a little more guidance, it even turned out into something that would quite efficiently destroy any aspirations anyone else had, for the time being. A strategically placed disaster was sometimes the best way to deal with things.

"Thank you, Mackie. You did me such a favor. I’m grateful.” Karla thanked her oblivious team mate, seemingly just for the back rub.

"S-sure, any time, doc." Mac grinned.

"I’ll tell the boys at medical to ease up on the anti-psychotics. It should help with the stuttering and the fidgeting." Karla dismissed and got dressed, grabbing her towel and sauntering off, hips swaying wide, with a smile painted on her red lips.

Chapter Text

"What you doing, fuckhead?" Bullseye sneered, walking into the kitchen to find Daken making something.

"Chocolate mousse," Daken said. He otherwise ignored the intrusion and continued with his task.

“Why?”

"Because I like it and Norman has us under quarantine.”

Bullseye paused and reached for the bowl of half-whipped mousse. He was rewarded with a slap on the wrist.

"That’s not done." Daken turned and dug in the fridge, taking out a glass bowl with ready mousse, topped with raspberries.

"Aren’t those Karla’s?" Bullseye indicated the berries. Daken shrugged and took a spoon to the mousse, holding it up in front of Bullseye’s face. He stared at it and backed half a step, only to flush at Daken’s smug smirk and out of contrariness taking the morsel that the man offered. It was rich and smooth, the sweet raspberry an enjoyable contrast to the dark and nearly bitter chocolate.

Daken smiled and reached up to wipe the corner of Bullseye’s mouth, chocolate stained his finger and Bullseye watched him, with baited breath, suck and lick it off with unnecessary care.

“Perfect," Daken purred and licked his lips.

Flushed like a beetroot, Bullseye grabbed both bowl and spoon from him and stormed off in an embarrassed huff. It would have been a shame to turn down a delicious dessert, regardless of who made it.

Chapter Text

The hospital bed was something he wasn’t aware of anymore, not really, not after the second dose of drugs. They had operated on him only hours ago, but somehow he kept on waking up, so they had just upped his medication and hoped that it would do the trick. It hadn’t. He was still somewhat conscious. Bullseye could hear doctors and nurses talk about him. About the serial killer with the crazy brain chemistry, who they should just have let die. It was usually stuff like that. They couldn’t believe that he was still alive after what had happened to him. Couldn’t even quite explain it. Bullseye didn’t care why he was alive. With the drugs he barely cared at all.

He barely bated an eye at his late night visitor, the intruder in his room who had slipped past all security. He forced his face into a smile, it was about as much as he could do. The Devil had come for him again. But Bullseye doubted that it was to finish the job. No Russian Roulette this time. He tried to focus his gaze at Mr. Tall, Dark and Handsome, but the drugs made it difficult.

His first attempt at speech was a strangled wheeze.

The Devil did him a strange kindness and held water to his lips. He drank carefully.

"—stroke of conscience?" Bullseye said, his voice barely a whisper.

"Something like that." He set aside the cup and stood impassive by his bed.

"Atonement looks bad on you. Kills the flames." Silence met him, heavy and ponderous. The Devil was probably monologuing. He was good at those. Bullseye liked hearing his voice go on about some trivial ethical dilemma that he had concocted out of a simple murder. People died. Bullseye liked helping this process along. The Devil did as well but hid behind saving people. He thought it funny sometimes.

Bullseye could feel his pain and nausea rise, sweat rose on his skin and he gritted his jaw. Unbidden, the Devil adjusted his medication, increasing the morphine. A towel dabbed his forehead, and the Devil waited him out.

"You’re in a strange mood," Bullseye tried to laugh but managed only a scoff and a pained grunt, the drugs were slowly kicking in. "What do you want so badly?"

"Answers."

"That’s cute."

"We’ve been around this many times. Why don’t you just tell me?"

"Tell you what?"

"Why."

"Why what? Do you think I need a why, my dancing devil? You put me here, again, and then you ask me why?"

The Devil waited him out again, the drugs made him a feverish mirage whenever Bullseye didn’t focus enough on him. He was starting to think that he must be hallucinating everything.

"I remember you, back then when you when you were undercover," Bullseye said, frowning and trying to recollect why he was saying anything at all. "Called yourself Stick. Do you? Remember, that is?"

"Yes."

"Saw you. Remember liking you. You were competition, but I did.” He smiled and blinked heavily. “Then you went and lied. You were the Devil, but I remembered liking you. You felt like me. There could have been—”

He frowned and lost touch of what he had intended to say. Tried to remember what the question had been. Bullseye looked up at the figure beside his bed. He was tall and decked in red, his nightmares eat at the corners of his mind, but then he saw his face. He smiled and looked at those milky eyes that do not see him.

Bullseye blinked heavily and his tongue was led in his mouth. Words died on it but he smiled at the red-haired man. He didn’t smile back but that didn’t bother him. He hadn’t expected it too either.

He doesn’t remember him leaving, and come morning he doesn’t remember him having been there.

Chapter Text

Daken woke up warm and comfortable, buried under a mountain of warm fluffy duvets and wrapped around the hot body of his - to use the term lightly - lover. Not quite fully awake, he pleased himself by cuddling up as close as humanly possible to Lester, and soaking in his warmth and presence. Lester still smelled of sex, and strongly of himself, and it was comforting just to use him as a pillow. Daken planted a fond kiss at his bared throat and nuzzled his face into him.

Lester made a muffled grunt and wrapped an arm around him, briefly scratching his hair then settling his hand by his shoulder, pulling him up close. Daken smiled into his chest and playfully kissed his nipple, Lester startled and squirmed irritably.

"Go the fuck to sleep." Lester said and grabbed him by the hair again, not quite pulling or petting it."I’m not getting up."

"Who said anything about getting up?" Daken purred, enjoying Lester’s hold on him.

"Some of us need sleep, you fucking sex kitten." Lester groused, turning and wrapping himself fully around Daken, pinning him down and spooning him, planting a sleepy kiss at the base of his neck.

Daken scooted up as close as he could, dragging him the duvet with him. He could feel Lester’s hot breath in his neck, the little irritable movements as he shifted away from his disheveled mohawk, and the steady beat of his heart.

He fell asleep in Lester’s arms again, bathed in his warmth and scent.

Chapter Text

Bullseye wasn’t one for tech usually but even he could recognize a potential untapped when it literally fell into his waiting arms. Norman had a warehouse full of stark tech and other confiscated meta tech; the web shooters were the least of the multitude of gear available. Bullseye had followed Mac, who had been looking for some of his old scorpion tech, to the warehouse. It was meant to be, he told himself and grinned widely.

Which was how Bullseye ended slinging with Mac across the NY skyline, screaming bloody murder. It turned out that while he had perfect aim and a good idea of how to use the web shooters, he was woefully under-prepared at the velocity, impact and need for pure strength.

"Just relax, man. You’ll get the hang of it. Heh,” Mac laughed at him - the symbiote providing instinctual knowledge of the intricacies of web slinging - and allowed him to clutch at him whenever he lost control over the jump.

"I’m gonna gut you if you ever tell anyone. Especially Daken,” Bullseye said and hung on for dear life, his arms shaking bad, as they landed on a rooftop. He fell on his knees and resisted the urge to vomit. “Fuck this shit.”

"Buck up, dude," Mac sad and slapped him across the back. Bullseye threw a blade at his throat, it did nothing as the symbiote caught it with ease.

“Dude! Just trying to help here,” Mac whined and hissed at him. “Well, fuck you too. I’m leaving.”

"How am I supposed to get down, asshole?" Bullseye yelled after him once he noticed that there wasn’t a staircase visible.

“Jump, shit for brains.” Mac cackled and swung into the city. Bullseye swore he was going to kill him, staring down resentfully at the web shooters. This hadn’t gone as planned.

"Fuck," He gulped and shot a web, jumping with a shriek as he had yet again misjudged the angle of descent.

Once he climbed out of the garbage, Bullseye took a cab back to the tower. He left the web shooters in the trash.

Chapter Text

Bullseye was ecstatic; he was dancing the rooftops with the Devil, with Billie on his lips. He sang happily and ran, dodging the Devil’s billy stick and giving as good as he got. Blood was shed. Punches and banter exchanged. All the happy necessities of life existed there on the New York skyline and the Devil danced with him. Unfortunately, it was soon becoming evident that that dear ole devil wasn’t having as much fun as him or really pulling out the stops.

"Hey, handsome! Having a bad day?" Bullseye asked and kicked him in the solar plexus. Daredevil caught his ankle and twisted, Bullseye slipped free in the last moment but hit the ground regardless.

"You’re here," the Devil replied and missed him by less than an inch in his follow-up attack as he rolled.

"No, no no. You’re lying. What’s up? Girlfriend die on you again?” Bullseye continued, got on his feet and ran for higher ground. “I swear it wasn’t me — this time.”

Daredevil didn’t waste his breath on replying but dodged the incoming attack, rushing him as he went.

"No, then. Work getting you down? I follow your cases, you know, you’re not half bad. I’d hire you myself, but well, I have no intention of getting caught." Bullseye said, distracting him from another barrage of playing cards.

"I don’t defend the guilty," the Devil replied and caught him over his left shoulder with his billy club. It wasn’t a perfect hit - which would have dislocated or broken bones - but it hurt.

"Touchy," he growled, circling, and closed the distance between them.

"Wanna hug it out?" Bullseye grabbed the Devil in a tight hold over the waist from behind, lifted and bent back to slam him into the ground head and shoulders first. Twisting out of the hold and going for a finishing kick, Bullseye was surprised when someone kicked him off his feet.

"I guess you’ll be needing that lawyer after all," Spider-Man remarked as he webbed and immobilized Bullseye.

"Cheater!" Bullseye managed to shout before he was muzzled by more web.

"It’s called a team-up, psycho," the Web Crawler said and pulled the Devil to his feet. "But honestly, what’s up, dude? You usually beat this freak up in seconds."

"I— uh. I had an argument. It was pretty much my fault. I think. I don’t know how to tell her I’m sorry," Daredevil mumbled. Bullseye rolled his eyes demonstratively.

"Ouch. I’ve had those too, sorry, man." Spider-Man consoled and awkwardly patted him on the back. "Wanna hug it out?"

Bullseye shot them both his best ‘that’s what I said’ look.

Chapter Text

Bullseye had been paid to perform an assassination at a party of a diplomat and he needed to do it in a way no one would suspect was murder. He was currently posing as a waiter; it was a cover he’d pulled several times before, and he had no problems balancing the tray of champagne flutes and gliding around unseen in the crowd.

He had his target in sight when his phone vibrated, hoping that the client hadn’t canceled on him he checked the screen quickly. Bullseye nearly dropped his tray when he saw what he’d received. It was a half nude of that asshole Daken with the text “thinkin ‘bout u”; the shithead was shirtless with a tattooed hand down his jeans. His face was cropped off but that damn tattoo was all the identification he needed. Flustered, he shoved his phone back and tried to forget that it ever happened.

With his best poker face on, Bullseye went looking for his target again, the damn Swiss bastard had disappeared somewhere. He didn’t get far before his phone vibrated again. With a sense of morbid curiosity, Bullseye checked his phone again. It was another snapchat from Daken. Now his jeans were unbuttoned and his hard dick visibly silhouetted against his brand underwear. “give me a hand baby” was the message this time and little hearts had been drawn on the picture.

Flushing, Bullseye rammed the phone back in his pocket, swearing that he’d fucking kill Daken for messing with him. He shoved passed some party goers, intently trying to find the fucking ambassador so he could finish his damn job.

His phone vibrated a third time. Bullseye ignored it. He could see the Swiss ambassador now, he was having a martini by the bar. His phone vibrated again. Pissed off, Bullseye pulled it up again and got a full frontal of Daken with the text “miss you” and a bullseye drawn on his chest. Just then someone snatched his phone from him.

It was the head caterer and she looked like she was going to explode.

"You’re not paid to be on the phone," she hissed at him and waved her finger at him. He had every intention in the world to kill her now. "Let’s see what was so important that you just had to—" she started and then her jaw dropped at the sight of the snapchat. Bullseye blushed despite himself.

"This is not— not appropriate during work hours. Leave your phone at home or turn it off,” she hissed, blushing slightly, and trying to keep up a nice face in front of the guests. “You can sext with your boyfriend on your own time.”

"Yes, ma’am," Bullseye gritted, wanting to protest but not being in a position to do so. The head caterer adjusted her shirt and returned his phone.

“Lucky sunnovabitch,” she muttered as she left, making him flush once more.

Bullseye closed his phone and went about killing the Swiss ambassador with a well-aimed olive in the mouth, choking him. In the chaos he hurried away back to the Tower fully intent on skinning Daken alive.

Chapter Text

It was Sunday night and Daken, Bullseye and Mac were having a Bogart marathon. They had already watched The Maltese Falcon (Bullseye’s favorite), The African Queen and Sabrina (which Mac favored because of Katharine Hepburn), and were starting on Casablanca (Daken’s preferred Bogart film).

Mac had just started on some new pills and he was starting to feel rather out of it even though it was only 2 am. Crammed in the sofa with Daken and Bullseye, he started to get antsy and shifting about nervously every few minutes.

"Be still, I’m trying to watch this," Daken snapped at him, eyes glued to the huge screen.

"Sorry," Mac muttered and tried to find a comfortable position. He kept on fidgeting until he felt Daken’s arm wrap over his shoulders and pull him close.

"Settle," Daken ordered, still watching the screen. Mac was surprised to admit that his newfound position was actually very comfortable. Daken was warm and firm, and he smelled very nice. Flushing slightly, Mac accepted the situation despite Bullseye’s incredulous glare.

Somewhere half through the movie, Mac started shift and fidget again, this time from boredom as Casablanca was far too moody for him, but was promptly stilled by Daken scratching him behind the ear. A part of him really wanted to protest and to feel indignant but it felt good and so comfortable. He could just feel himself relax into Daken’s body, resting his head against his chest, out of the corner of his eye he could see Bullseye’s mute horror.

A low keening noise left his mouth and Mac realized that he had let Venom slip out. Daken seemed unconcerned and continued to scratch and stroke his head while watching the movie. The symbiote flickered and touched at Daken’s hand but did not attempt to stop him.

Venom felt intensely aware of how good Daken smelled and tasted but there was an awareness that if he bothered the mutant too much he might stop doing what he was doing.

Tentatively, Venom flicked their tongue along Daken’s hand, licking it like an affectionate dog. Daken allowed it and petted them absentmindedly, smiling at the scene where Ilsa confronts Rick in the deserted café. Venom crooned and nuzzled the side of Daken’s face, the mutant clicks his tongue at him to express his annoyance at this.

Venom could see Bullseye staring at them, shifting uncomfortably and flushed. They hissed at him, hoping that he would stay back and not steal Daken’s attention.

"None of that," Daken chided and then scratched the underside of Venom’s jaw when they settled back into their seat beside him.

The continued to watch the rest of the movie in this manner, Daken petting and scratching Venom and Bullseye’s increasingly uncomfortable stare on the both of them. By the end of the movie, Venom had fallen asleep against Daken.

Mac woke up late that day, alone in the couch with a quilt draped over him.

Chapter Text

"I swear I will bend each and every one of you over my knee unless you settle," Ares said in a voice that seemed much louder than it was. The room quieted down with some awkward shuffling as the Avengers sat down in their seats with a varying degree of resentment.

It had all started with a security leak and a rumor of a biohazard. Or possibly psychics. Norman was in full paranoia mode and had muttered something about crucifying the first person who stepped out of line. Regardless, it had resulted in full lockdown and for the need for a full check-up for all personnel.

At the moment most of the Avengers were assembled in a waiting room and told to stay put until Director Hand came for them. Norman and Victoria herself had been first out and cleared. It was Sentry’s turn at the moment and that might have contributed to the unrest among remaining Avengers.

Mac was clutching himself and rocking back and forth while whining. “I don’t like this, guys, I really don’t like this. What if its got us and we just don’t know it yet? What if—”

"Oh, shut up, Gargan! No one cares. There is no fucking ‘it’!" Bullseye snapped, shifting his anger at the situation at the other man.

"You don’t know that! Why else do they got us confined together?" Mac whined and the symbiote moved irritably around him, sensing its host’s distress.

"You’re such a fucking baby, Gargan. Grow a pair," Bullseye spat.

"He does have a point. I really don’t see the need to detain us in this undignified manner; it would have been much more convenient to just let us stay in our rooms,” Karla commented, clicking her heels into the floor in an annoyed manner.

"Normie wants us to police each other, dear," Daken drawled and slumped in his seat, playing the card of a bored teenager to a tee.

"If he cares so fucking much about security why the fuck did he let Mac keep his symbiote?" Bullseye gripped and glared at Mac who was now hanging upside down from the ceiling. Mac hissed at him, the symbiote shaping a set of inhuman teeth and tongue to amplify the effect.

"Mac wouldn’t be much good at policing anyone without it would he?" Daken sniped and picked at his nail polish.

"Well, fuck you too," Bullseye growled, starting to stand until he saw the glare Ares was giving him, he sat down again with a huff.

"Good boy, so obedient," Daken purred, "I wonder what else he could make you do."

"Shut your whore-mouth—"

"Don’t make me repeat myself," Ares stated and returned to his fitness magazine as both men quieted down pointedly. Daken settled to half-lounge in his chair in a manner that couldn’t possibly be comfortable but did look appealing. Bullseye crossed his arms and glared at the floor but kept on casting glances at Daken.

It was only a few moments later that Ares sighed loudly to himself as the noises around him were getting more insistent.

"I don’t care who started it but everybody stops it right now," he told the room at large without looking up, "if you make me stop reading this it will hurt."

There was a sudden stillness and then what sounded like a scuffle. Ares got up and promptly slapped both Daken and Bullseye open-handedly, grabbed Mac from the ceiling and planted him back on his seat and stopped in front of Karla.

"I do not hit women unless they give me good reason. Stop rousing these fools to battle or I will have more than reason enough, woman."

"—Yes."

"Good. We have an understanding," Ares grunted and sat back down on his seat with his magazine.

"Ms. Sofen. it is your turn. Has everything gone well?" Victoria asked as she stepped into the room, looking at Bullseye’s red cheek and every else’s quiet demeanor.

"Nothing I didn’t handle," Ares remarked.

"Well done, Ares. Ms. Sofen?" Victoria said with a polite smile, Karla followed her out glumly, clearly biting her tongue to keep from saying something.

Silence reigned for a while, only interrupted by the sound of Ares turning the pages of his magazine. However, after a while Daken started to adjust in his seat, sighing and scoffing with every shift, boredom taking a toll on the mutant. His restlessness was infecting the others and he’d already started a low-intensity non-verbal argument with Bullseye.

"Cease your incessant squirming, Daken. You are not a child," Ares grunted in annoyance, starting to feel the toll of having to deal with these mortals with no rigor or self-discipline.

"What if I don’t? You really gonna spank me, big Daddy?" Daken mocked, "what if I want you too?" he added with a purr. Ares gave the childish mutant a long-suffering glare and thought for a moment whether it would be worth it.

Abruptly, he stood and grabbed the mutant by his collar, pulling him to his feet. “I could hurt you, boy. I could humiliate you. I could make you stand right here for hours if I so pleased while you bled to death. But I know children like you. I’ve raised many myself. My boy Deimos was disobedient, Phobos is worse yet,” Ares explained and held Daken by his jaw, making him look up at him.

"I am not your father but in his absence I will bear that mantle in the name of duty," he proclaimed, his grip tightening, Daken blanched with his words, "Children need discipline — but discipline is no good without motivation."

"For now, I will allow you to sit with your playmate. Quietly. If you can do that, this does not have to become unpleasant. You will be an obedient child, Daken," Ares ordered and sat Daken down next to Bullseye, who made a face like he was about to protest but quieted down instantly at the sight of Ares raised eyebrow.

"Play nice," Ares repeated with a raised finger, sitting down only when both Daken and Bullseye nodded their abashed and grudging assent. Mac snickered but choked on it as Ares cuffed him over the head. "That counts for you too."

The next half an hour went by quietly with Mac napping in his seat, Ares finishing the magazine and starting another on guns & ammo, and Daken and Bullseye sat close to each other in a quiet conversation about their best kills.

"Mr. Gargan, please," Victoria announced, Mac woke up and shuffled off past her with a shifty glance at Ares who nodded. Next up was Bullseye. Then Daken. Both repeated this behavior of deferring to Ares.

Finally, it was the God of War’s turn.

"I don’t know how you did it, Ares, but I am impressed. They have never been so agreeable. You must tell me your secret," Victoria commented as she walked with him to med lab.

"No secret. Do not treat them like warriors, they are not. They are foolish children," Ares replied as he kept a brisk walking speed. "Treat them as such."

"I never wanted children," Victoria sighed.

"Sappho was a teacher and a mother to the maidens of Lesbos," Ares said and shrugged, rumbling something in ancient Greek.

φάινεταί μοι κῆνοσ ἴσοσ τηέοισιν
ἔμμεν ὤνερ ὄστισ ἐναντίοσ τοι
ἰζάνει καὶ πλασίον ἀδυ
     φωνεύσασ ὐπακούει*

Victoria gave him a startled glance.

"I-I didn’t think you one for poetry," Victoria remarked, recognizing it as a stanza from Sappho even if the words eluded her. She’d read a course on Lesbian Literature in collage and taken a liking to the few fragments that were available.

"I am not. That is my brother’s calling. But the ladies like poetry," Ares grinned and laughed heartily. "If you would like to hear some more you’re welcome to my chamber."

"I have to decline," Victoria asserted firmly.

"Ah, yes. If I was a woman I could see the point of preferring women in bed. Much more beautiful, generally," Ares declared with another grin.

Victoria had to smile as well, the God had a certain charm about him misguided as it was.

Chapter Text

As the dust settled it became clear to Daken that the situation could have been better. The building had come crashing down and it was only due to a stroke of luck that he and Ares were trapped in the small space between debris rather than being impaled and crushed. He didn’t know what had happened to the rest of the team nor could he scent any of them. He didn’t waste any time looking on trying to cry for help but studied his surroundings instead. As far as he could tell there were nowhere to escape and the structural integrity of the confined space was far too weak, any attempts to dig or break their way out would result in the entire structure falling down on them.

Ares had lumbered to his feet and was glaring at the walls and rubble intently, fists clenched.

"I wouldn’t do that," Daken warned.

"Do not think to command me. I could escape with ease if I were on my own, I only refrain as it would kill you," Ares rumbled. Daken stilled and observed the God of War with his head cocked, his estimation of him rising slightly. He was observant at the very least.

"They will find us in time," he said and sat down on some debris, "is there any way you would care to spend our time?" Daken let himself smile suggestively.

"It is custom to share stories of great battles," Ares replied, ignoring Daken’s come ons,"However, I grow weary of the petty achievements of fools." Daken bristled and gritted his teeth, it was unwise to engage Ares but it galled him to let the war god insult him. With his most gracious smile, he let it slide and tried to relax.

"I’ve been told I’m a good listener," Daken remarked with feigned ease. Ignoring him completely, Ares settled on the ground, his axe resting over his knees, and started to inspect the edge of it for damage.

"I am trying to be sociable," Daken said, trying to keep the bite out of his voice, "but if you so wish." He shifted and tried to keep his expression neutral but his irritation flickered across his face, scrunching his nose and flashing teeth. Ares sudden laughter startled him, and he stared at the God of War’s shaking shoulders and hearty smile.

"Only children and fools do not know when to still their mouths. I had thought you a fool, now I think it is evident that you are a child," Ares rumbled in his deep voice once he got his mirth under control, "I have a son. You remind me of him. He does that— that gesture of yours. It is strangely endearing.” Daken flushed deeply and opened his mouth too snarl something vicious, stopping himself in the last moment upon seeing Ares amused grin. There was nothing he could say to save face. He would have his vengeance later.

"Ha! He learns!" Ares exclaimed and chuckled once more, tending to his ax with care. Daken gritted his teeth and raised his chin, trying his best to assemble whatever dignity he had left. Ares grinned widely at him once more and let the silence grow. Daken waited, trying not to fidget, and listened to the sound of Ares sharpening his ax on a whetstone.

It took three hours for them to be found. Three hours of Ares laughing at, what felt like, every movement he did. Three hours of sly looks, amused grinning and patronizing remarks. Daken hadn’t felt this humiliated in ages nor had his patience ever been so sorely tested. When they finally did see the sunlight once more, Ares had the gall to ruffle his hair and tell him to go play with his friends. Daken felt like gutting him right then and there, but restrained himself. Ares laughed at his efforts and ambled off to flirt with Karla.

Daken would make the God of War pay even if it took a lifetime. No one called him a child.

To vent his anger he fell into an old argument with Bullseye that quickly developed into a fight. Mid-battle, as they rolled on the ground and spat insults at each other, Daken heard Ares damnable laughter again and the childishness of his current situation dawned on him as did his embarrassed blush.

He’d get Ares back for this.

Chapter Text

"Bystanders make great snacks," Mac snickered and let the symbiote cover his face, his large tongue lolling out and slobbering on the desk. Karla, who had brought a magazine with her, rolled it up and promptly hit Mac with it in the back of the head.

"Bad Venom," she chided and then continued the conversation with Osborn as if uninterrupted. She repeated this every time Mac said or did something inappropriate. The others seemed to just accept it, with a few half-hidden snickers and scoffs, and Osborn pretended that it wasn’t happening in the first place and thus also ignored Mac’s protests. However, Osborn did stop any attempts at retaliation from Mac, sicking Sentry at him when he growled at Karla after a particularly hard smack.

The next day, Karla walked into the kitchen and saw Mac eating a squirrel. God knows where he’d found it. Stopping and turning back to her room, she picked up the hand-held air-horn she’d bought the day before and went back into the kitchen. Without hesitation she blasted it straight at Mac’s ears. He shrieked and fell to the floor.

"Bad Venom. No squirrels indoors," she said once he settled.

"What the hell—?" Mac whined.

"Clean up this mess and don’t let me ever catch you with dead animals in the Tower, Mac," Karla repeated and crossed her arms. "Get on with it." Grousing, Mac did as she said and cleaned up the kitchen from squirrel and slobber. Karla nodded happily at the result and patted him on the cheek.

"Good boy," she praised him and stalked away.

After a few days of this, Mac started to get a handle on polite behavior but also contracted the habit of following Karla around like a puppy. Bullseye and Daken found this to be the most hilarious thing ever but had also caught on to the fact that Mac was easy to train after Karla’s through conditioning. The started using pieces of meat as treats to get Mac to do things and it actually worked rather fine as long as Karla didn’t decide that the “trick” they taught Mac was a counterproductive one.

Mac decided that he rather liked making Karla happy. Karla decided that Mac was less of a hassle like this. She had always wanted a dog when she was little anyhow. Close enough.

Chapter Text

Bullseye wandered the gallery a glass of champagne and a plate of finger-foods in hand, glancing only passingly at the mediocre art. The ear-piece differentiated him from the regular guests in their tuxes and the occasional gown. He didn’t pay any notice to their disdainful looks and dismissive attitudes, though he did entertain the thought of killing them all unless an actual reason for his presence was imminent. Security jobs were boring, despite the fact that the client was convinced an attempt at his scummy life would be made. Then again killing assassins was more fun that dilettantes. 

He paused briefly at a huge canvas splattered with color, he let his eyes rest at it as he ate. He assumed that it like most things in this gallery were ludicrously expensive and impressive art. Personally, he cared little for canvas or paint. His favorite medium was and always would be the human body.

“To your liking?” A woman stood next to him and looked at the painting. Bullseye remembered her from the security briefing, she was the curator. Onika Franks. Dark and bold with heavy jewelry stark against her skin. He looked back at the painting; composite splatter of yellows, blues and grey just like everything else in the world.

“I have protanopia, I’m afraid it effects my appreciation of art, ma’am.” He smiled at her, registering the wedding ring on her finger. “The shape is pleasing,” he added as an afterthought.

“You mean… color blindness? I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to offend.”

“Yes.” He nodded and made a mockingly severe face.”We’re both here tonight on business, ma’am.“

“I won’t tell if you don’t,” she whispered co-conspiratorially. “There are some sculptures in the other room that might be more… accessible.” 

“I’ll keep that in mind.” Bullseye tried to estimate if she was flirting with him or not, then again he wasn’t very concerned with those matters. “Is the event going poorly or all of these distinguished guest even worse appreciators of art than I?”

“I am that transparent?” She sighed and Bullseye eyed her throat and the barely visible pulse point, he was certain that a good artery spray would improve the painting.

“Tell me, what colors is it?” he asked instead, discarding the plate and the glass to a passing waiter decked in white, his tray wobbled.

“I’d say crimson red with purple and gold are the main accents. You see that shape in the left corner there?” She pointed at a grey blob that kinda looked like a headless torso. “It’s crimson and burgundy, reminiscent of blood, symbolic of the life theme that this collection has.”

He nodded as if her statement was meaningful and decided if he didn’t get to kill someone soon, he’d empty her out and use her blood as paint and give these fancy patrons a real appreciation of life. “I’m afraid I need to do my rounds, it has been a pleasure, ma’am.”

A true pleasure would be to gut her and finger paint a massive bull’s eye on every damn canvas in the gallery. It’d be the ambiance he deserved for his masterpieces. He bowed and kissed her hand, much to her surprise, his lips barely touching her and he savored the scent of her and wanted to taste her blood on his lips. Charm had its perks. Her surprise and fear would be sweet.

His rounds were sorely disappointing until he noticed that one waiter from before was packing heat. Very clumsily too, his jacket lining bulged as he moved and he was carrying his tray inexpertly. Fucking amateur. It was insulting. 

He was nearly tempted to let the assassination attempt go on until he noticed that dumbass with the tray wasn’t the only one who was suspicious. One of the body guards was eyeing the client nervously and catching the waiter’s gaze not once but thrice. Someone was actually keen on killing this pompous jackass, but the effort it took to get in two killers under the guise of working there meant that their employer had an insider higher up the food-chain or that the employer was there themselves. 

This was shaping up to be something worth his station and skill.

Bullseye lingered and watched, taking another glass of champagne. He had all the time in the world, he granted them the time it would take him to finish his drink before he killed them. It was good bubbly. He was also the tiniest bit curious if he could spot the mastermind of this assassination. He had two candidates that he kept an eye on, the wife, a high-society lady with a severe hairdo high on her head and an angry disposition, and the business partner, a bland fellow who tried to talk  shop all the time despite his client’s dismissive attitude. Those were the usual suspects in most insider jobs anyhow.

He didn’t get to finish his glass.

The first movement came from the waiter, he pulled his piece and Bullseye killed him before he could even set his aim at the client’s big fat head and his stupid mustache. Shards of a broken champagne flute stuck out of the waiter’s throat and blood gushed across the room as Bullseye turned his body around to protect himself from the retaliation shots from the secondary killer. Sloppy and thoughtless, just as he’d expected. The killer had lost sight of the target and was getting side-tracked. Bullseye would have been merciful had he showed the slightest shred of competence, now his death would be slow.

Bullseye rammed him with the corpse and pulled his own piece, a solid Glock, aiming for the man’s kneecaps and groin. He relished in the loud bang and the shattering of bone and splatter of blood. The hitter actually didn’t scream, which Bullseye gave him some accord for. The crowd however was finally starting to realize what had happened and were in a panic, screaming and running. Much to his irritation however, he’d lost sight of both his client and his suspects. Due diligence demanded that he’d shorten his playtime.

“Oh my God, oh my—” A familiar voice sobbed and Bullseye saw the curator frozen in fear just a few feet from him. She was the only person there other than him and the hitmen. A smile painted his face and he sauntered close to the bleeding hitter on the floor and double tapped him in the head just to get a good splatter. It was a pleasing shape.

He savored her terrified whimpers and the blowback of blood on his skin, soaking it in and contemplating for a second whether he should use the hitter’s gun and kill her with it. 

“Oh God, please don’t—” she whimpered, she must have seen something in his face. Her begging though pleased him. Right now he was her God. It brought blood to his groin in a way no flirtation ever would. 

“Please, ma’am, get to safety,” he urged her jovially and set his sights on following his client to the back, where he’d doubtlessly gone. She visibly blanched and ran, her jewelry clinking and jingling as she moved. He aimed at the back of her head.

“Bang,” he whispered to himself, chuckled and sauntered to the “secure” rooms in the back. He got there in time to see the business partner point a gun at his idiot client. Neither man had noticed him.

“–it’s your fault! We’re nearly bankrupt and you fucking want to do a gallery event–”

Bullseye lingered by the door and wondered if this information would affect his bottom-line, he really hated it when a client tried to screw him. No one screwed him. Then again he’d already received half of his fee. However, he was already feeling a bit low on magnanimity. 

“Gentlemen, sorry to interrupt your conversation. However, there seems to be a conflict of interest at hand.”

Both men turned and stared at him.

“Save me! He’s gone insane,” His client shouted and pointed at his business partner, his ridiculous mustache quivering as he bristled and trembled. 

“Gladly, however it has been brought to my attention that you are not good for the money.”

“What-? I’ll pay you anything! He’s trying to kill me, you idiot!”

“I’ll give you his life-insurance if you leave,” the business partner interjected, his eyes feverish and his tux sweaty and ill-fitting. “I have control over the finances if he dies and I swear I’ll pay you what he owes. He has no liquid funds anymore after your first fee and this… this party.”

“What I‘m hearing here is a breech of contract. Very naughty.” Bullseye wagged his finger at the both of them. “I have no reason to believe I’ll receive my fee.” 

“Are you insane? I demand–” His former client never got to finish that statement as he shot both him and his partner pointblank in the face. They both lived still, it would take at least a minute or two for them to bleed out. He didn’t have much time. Happily whistling, he dragged the bleeding bodies to the gallery proper and got to work.

Bullseye was nearly done with his performance piece when he heard the clicking of heels and the whimpering gasp. He turned with a wide smile painted on his lips, licking off the blood on his teeth. “I did enjoy the sculptures, I hope you don’t mind my additions, ma'am. I think I really got the theme right. Transcended it even.”

She trembled and covered her mouth with her hands, starring stunned at his masterpieces. The blood was still fresh enough to drip on the floor of the impaled bodies of their employers hanging from metal sculptures.

“To your liking?”

The curator fainted. 

He really did appreciate a captive and responsive audience. 

Chapter Text

The man by some know as Gentleman Lester, by others far more ominously as Bullseye, was fuming behind his stiff smile. The heist on the gold transport had gone all balls from the get go as someone had gotten there first. He and Fisk’s hired guns had come up empty handed and he wasn’t looking forward to coming back with the bad news.

Frankly, the only this he could do to save his hide and reputation was to find the sunnovagun who’d stolen their loot. His best chance was this sinkhole of a town, as it was the only one within riding distance, and hoping that their target needed to resupply. The saloon was his best and only bet. He’d sent the rough-hands out to survey the lands in case their fellow had set camp.

“Why don’t you look like you rode up hard and put up wet. Need a drink?”

“Whiskey, darling. Leave the bottle.” He shoved money at here without really looking as his eyes were surveying the crowd, looking for the kinda man who had a sudden urge to unload some coin. Idly, he toyed with a deck of cards, shuffling and cutting, as he tried to get a read of the people who came and went. Cowboys, railroad workers, girls of the line and local folk, no one who stuck out.

“Here you go.” The bottle looked like good fare, not the rot-gut he’d expected, and as the wench turned to leave he grabbed her bare arm. He was too much in a hurry and a pinch to bother with manners. He was filthy and dressed down and it got his hackles up worse than most things.

“Got any strangers turning up with gold to spend? Ain’t talking about some stiff saddle with some scuds, darling, really proper gold, you reckon.”

“Other than you, mister? Not a damn sight.” She pulled her arm free with a sneer, the cuss leaving her lips like spittle, Lester smiled.

“Then get out of mine.”

No sooner had he said that when he finally noticed a man sitting at a corner table, sipping his drink and minding his business, decked out in heavy duty travel gear, his face barely visible. It took Lester some ten minutes of eyeing the fellow to get a read on what had raised his hackles about him. Firstly and most importantly, he was packing iron, not just your usual run of the mill gun-totting, but more than a few aces up his sleeve kind of armed, and he looked real comfortable with it. A longrider if he’d ever seen one. The type you’d see at a more bucket of blood kinda establishment rather something as respectable as this saloon.

Secondly, the chap was a Johnny Chinaman. He’d first reckoned him a bit of an Indian or possibly a bean-eater, but when he took a drink and raised his face those dark slant-eyes gave him right away. Unusual to see one of his kind this far east of California, let alone one who looked like several shades of trouble and got a set of saddle-bags on him that looked mighty heavy.

Lester pocketed his cards and picked his bottle, sauntering to the strangers table and settling down in the chair opposite to him, putting the bottle between them and a gun pointed beneath the table. “Howdy, friend. Don’t kick up a row and let’s talk business over a drink.”

The man gave him a cold glare but then leaned right back in his seat as if he was wholly comfortable with the fact that he had a six-shooter aimed right at his family jewels. A cocked eyebrow beneath his brimmed hat was all the response he gave.

“Now, you might not reckon who I am–”

“I know very well who you are. You’re the man who ate my dust.” His voice was smooth and light, spoken in perfect English with only the slightest of hints of an accent that actually reminded Lester of Italian. He curbed his surprise and smiled back with all the malice he could.

“So you admit it. You stole my gold. Well, that does cut our chatter pleasantly short. Just hand over the saddlebags and you won’t get a bad case of lead poisoning.”

“I do not think so, friend.” The man leaned forward with a congenial grin and poured himself a drink, sipping his glass with a pleased hum. “This actually is better, let’s have that drink.”

“Why aren’t you bold as brass, Johnny. But I’ve had a damn of a day and don’t fancy wasting more of it on you.”

“I think I do. You’re quite handsome under that grime.”

Lester felt like choking on his tongue for a moment but decided that it was better to take it out on the nancy at hand. “I’m a handsome devil, alright, and a devil who will kill you if you keep yammering.” He prodded him with his gun and he knew the moment he did that he’d made a mistake. Next thing Lester knew, his wrist ached and his gun was holstered in the other man’s boot. He hadn’t even seen him move.

“You’re a dead man, Johnny.”

“No need to be hasty, friend. Don’t go for another either, the sheriff will come here, you have seen the signs prohibiting openly carrying a gun, and that will be uncomfortable for the both of us. Tell me, what is your name? It feels so very impolite to converse with a man whose name I don’t know.”

“Lester. I’ll carve it into your yellow face, you–”

“Please call me Daken. Furthermore, I’m not Chinese. I’m Japanese, well, mostly. The rest is Alberta, to my shame,” Daken prattled and poured him a drink and stepped on his boot, warning him against reaching for his spare. “I’m currently carrying enough gold to spend on the both of us, and frankly, I’m a tad starved for company and I’ve had a drink or two. You look like you’ll do. Once we get that stench off you and, what, a month’s worth of dust?”

“Prey tell, Daken, have you always been absolutely insane or has the sun gotten to you?”

“Quite possibly. My standards have dropped. Tragic.” Daken hooked a leg on his chair and pulled him closer. “My first thought was to gut you like a hog and to kill every man, woman, and child here, but then I thought, ええじゃないか?” The Japanese gibberish to Lester but he could recognize a “what the hell” when he heard one. “You have pretty lips and eyes.”

Lester glared at him and drowned his glass, letting the whiskey burn his throat, pretending that was the only thing burning in his belly. Daken smiled and drank his glass, slamming it on the table and standing abruptly.

Leaning down low, he whispered with a menacing grin: “I’m staying across the street, got a room there for the night, third door on the second floor. Come over in a while if you want your gun back or if you want to see any of the gold. Either way it goes, we’ll have a right shindig.”

His breath catching his is throat, Lester wasn’t certain if it was a threat or yet another flirtation, but he knew even now that he would visit this man. Alone. He’d walk into whatever trap he had laid because it was his only choice. Damn Fisk. This was his pride. The flannel mouthed slant-eyed bastard had taken his revolver. Or at least that’s what he told himself as he tried to cool his heels.

Lester fumed and drank another glass, the cogs in his head turning, and focusing on thoughts of gutting the damned bastard. He couldn’t do it in broad daylight without complications, the town despite being a tiny piece of shit was built around a military fort. The law was far too close by for his comfort, he had enough warrants in his name not to want to risk it or losing the gold. He’d take out the Jap in his own room and abscond with the bounty, it’d be a tough fight or a clever game. He didn’t quite want to think of the other option. For some reason, however, he was absolutely certain that Daken wouldn’t run outta town.

He didn’t last an hour before he slipped out of the saloon as discreetly as he could and the next thing he knew he was standing at Daken’s door. Quietly, he drew his gun and told himself that he’d put a bullet in Daken’s head the moment he kicked that door open. What Lester hadn’t expected, not consciously at least, was the sight of a wet and wholly naked Daken standing in the middle of the room as the door slammed open.

“You’re early.” Was all the comment the still very naked man made and Lester found himself unable to either say or do anything, gun still raised ineffectually.

Daken was frankly speaking prettier than any painted lady or toffer mademoiselle Lester had ever set his eyes on, with his honeyed hairless skin and nearly effeminate face framed by dark wet tresses. The sides of his head were shaved like a Iroquois Indian’s but kept longer, touching nearly the base of his spine as it fell over his muscular back. The extensive tattoo on his arm, shoulder and chest did everything to enhance that – he’d never seen such a design before either. He was a very strapping lad, Lester noted inanely as he tried to get his brain into fixating on something that wasn’t the notion of his cock anywhere near the thieving bastard.

“Please close the door and your mouth, darling,” Daken said and squeezed out the water from his hair into the large tub on the floor. Lester dumbly obeyed.

“Pardon my manners, but I’ll be taking my revolver and the gold right now.” He steadied his aim right on target, a cocky grin back on his face.

“Oh? Before a bath even?” Daken was talking like he was declining a cup of tea and Lester fought the urge to splutter at his arrogance. Daken was naked and had a gun pointed at him, that was when sane men started to blubber and beg for their lives, not offering a wash and a fuck.

Daken smiled at him, softly, and padded over, lowering his gun-hand gently and starting to undress him in a fashion that was nearly demure. It rattled him and he wanted to hurt him, but he couldn’t bring himself to raise his gun or to throw a punch. Lester blamed his bamboozled bewilderment as to why he allowed this farce. Daken stripped him and tossed his dusty clothes on the floor. However when Lester was down to his undergarments he grabbed Daken’s wrist to stop him, only to once more be subjected to Daken’s swift reflexes, and literally tossed into the tub with a splash of water. Where the hell had he learned to move like that? He’d heard of samurai and ninja in campfire stories from Elektra, but he put her and the stories to shame.

“You stink, get clean and we’ll continue this conversation.” Daken grinned evilly and lounged on the bed, starring intently at him and toying with Lester’s, his!, revolver.

Feeling foolish and humiliated, yet faced with a situation where he was the unshucked man in front if the unshucked gun, Lester aggressively washed himself. Daken had been right that he was filthy, the water quickly became murky with filth and as he rubbed the soap into his hair it blackened. He hadn’t expected Daken to dump the pitcher over his head, but it was welcome despite the cold as he rid himself of the soapy suds and grime.

“I’ll be damned. You’re actually blond under that grime, Lester. You clean up nicely, it seems I haven’t compromised my tastes after all.” Daken still toyed with his gun and tossed him a rough towel, Lester glared murder at him and dried himself. Despite it all, it felt good to get clean, he didn’t relish the thought of putting on his travel worn grimy clothes. He suddenly missed his suits. He hated doing the long ride despite the fact that it usually mean that he got his fill of blood.

“No need to look so cross, come here, handsome.” Daken was there and dragged him to the bed; the revolver no longer in his hand. Lester didn’t think, he merely acted, and in a few moves he had Daken pinned to the bed and the revolver pointed straight at his head.

“I should shoot you right now. Splatter your brains out for the coyotes to eat. You stole my Colt and my gold.”

Daken seemed nonplussed as ever and merely suggestively bucked his hips beneath him. “Technically, the latter belonged to the local railroad Baron and I just got there first. Fair and square, darling.”

“It was my heist.”

“I didn’t see your name on it, not that I would have cared.” A mocking grin on a pleasant face and another shift and buck of hips, Daken was as good as writhing beneath him and it was starting to speak to his cock, which was getting insistent. All it wanted to do was fuck that smug grin straight off Daken’s face. Hell, all Lester wanted to do was to bury himself in the willing body beneath him.

“To hell with it.” Lester set aside the Colt and crushed his lips to Daken’s and pulled at his hair, he was much softer than any man had a right to be and yet there was such strength in him that pushed back the moment Lester gave any quarter. It had been far too long that he’d gotten anything, not even some “mutual solace” in the bedrolls.

He started when Daken suddenly shimmed down his body, kissing and licking him, until he reached his cock and, to his surprise, took him into his mouth, sucking and licking him maddeningly. It wasn’t something that had been done to him before, not that he hadn’t heard of mouth fucking, but that was the kinda stuff you only thought the French girls did and wanted top buck for the trouble. He was starting to be of the mind that it would be worth it.

Daken released him with a perverse wet slurp and slunk up the bed again, turning on his stomach and giving him the most lewd grin to ever have graced a pretty face. Lester cussed himself and crazy chinamen robbers, pushing into Daken with a slow movement, just relishing at the feel of his hot tight body. A low moan left him as Daken squirmed beneath him, settling himself to the hilt like it was nothing, it felt like a million bucks however. He’d never been loud but damn if Daken wasn’t pushing him to be noisy and he really didn’t fancy getting jailed for sodomy any more than for fighting on the street. He didn’t really fancy riding out on a rail in a hurry either.

A chuckle left him and he set a slow pace, fucking Daken’s ass as the man happily panted beneath him. He stopped mentally to marvel at Daken’s enjoyment, seldom of the arguably few times Lester had used a man like that had he ever seen such joy. Then again, he wasn’t some boy that didn’t have a choice or know any better. It baffled him and as Daken threw him a bright toothed smile over his shoulder, he nearly lost his breath. Again, the thought of shooting him in the head with his Colt repeated itself but Daken felt too damnably good. Lester seriously didn’t care for the gold at the moment, he had very much more pressing needs, besides he had his gun back so things were good.

Finishing off inside of Daken felt like a punch to the gut as much as it was pure bliss, and Lester fell into bed with a groan.

“My turn, あなた.” Daken’s voice was low and husky. Lester felt him put his hand on Daken’s hard-on, feeling a curious hanker to please him, Lester dutifully jerked him off, watching his face as he did. He was beautiful. The strength of that sentiment jarred at him and made him want to smash his pretty face in with the butt of his gun, but then Daken came and it was just too good.

He didn’t think when Daken nestled up to him like a lovesick girl, pressed so tightly to him, nor when he felt him fall asleep, his breath slowing and his body stilling. Lester couldn’t quite understand how he went from intending to kill and rob the man, to fucking and sleeping with him. It was like his cock had cold cocked his mind.

At a second thought, he couldn’t understand how the man in his arms somehow trusted him not to kill him. Then again he strongly suspected that Daken had spent too much time in the desert and was on the first name basis with all the lizards. Then he probably ate them, the crazy shameless fucker. What kind of man steals over half a million in gold and then just waltzes into bed with the man trying to kill him over it?

A suspicion had him untangling himself from the other man as gently as he could. Quickly, Lester riffled and searched through the entire room and the saddlebags that had previously teased him with their weight, until it dawned at him. The gold wasn’t here. Had Daken ever had it? But he had known about the railroad road job, it had to be him. It had too. Had the damn crafty dodger hidden it or pawned it to someone else before he caught up with him?

“Looks like you wisened up, Lester. It ain’t here,” Daken said from the bed and Lester turned to point his gun at him once more. He was stretched out in all his nakedness and the fading sunlight colored him in gold, making his skin look like it shone.

“Where is it?”

“We’ve done this song and dance, we know how it ends.”

“Well, been there now, novelty’s worn out, I’ll just put a bullet in your eye.” Lester said with all the cruelty he could and a shiny smile.

“I know what lies beneath that carefully placed mask of a pleasant smile, and it’s nothing short of broken,” Daken commented as if he bored him and settled on his back on the bed. “I saw you kill those men who were guarding the goods on the train, saved me the trouble. I think I liked you then already. You didn’t see me though. But I saw you, all of you.”

“Where is the gold?”

“Why? So that you can give it to your employer?”

Lester cocked his gun and shot, he aimed for Daken’s leg, but instead the revolver just clicked. He pulled the trigger again and it clicked. The damn bastard had unloaded the gun. Of course he had, Lester thought and started to laugh. “Hell, you were stringing me along from the start. This what you do? Killer bunko artist train robber? How by God do you even know about my employer?”

“I told you from the start, I know exactly who you are, Gentleman Bullseye. I’m not new to these backwaters and I watched you.“

“I should kill you.”

“Not that much fun in that. Come back to bed. I’ll show you a good time. Let’s fuck now and kill people later.”

“Who are you?”

“I told you I’m just Daken. But maybe my poppa’s name means more to you: James Howlett. If I don’t misremember, the Cree Indians call him kihkwahâkew: wolverine. He does have the infuriating habit of being everywhere and leaving his mark, so to speak.” The resentment rolled off him like ichor.

Lester was startled to recognize the name. Most anyone who knew any frontier or war stories had heard of Jimmy Howlett. Craziest sonnovabitch on the continent, wasn’t a battle he wasn’t said to have taken part of and not a adventure he hadn’t sailed on. Not that Lester had believed all the stories and mostly thought him a dead man who might have fought a battle or two and bedded a girl or dozen in his day. He hadn’t expected to have his existence confirmed, let alone to lie with a fruit of that excess. Seemed like insanity galloped in the family.

“I see you do know of him. Then again he left an impression in Japan too, leaving me behind to face his crimes.The Meijin Ishin couldn’t have come a day sooner. I should have been on a ship out a decade earlier.” Daken spat the words out with anger that twisted his face in to a mask of fury.

Lester didn’t quite follow the specifics, but got the gist of things. A bastard half-breed child wasn’t welcome anywhere. A pang of sympathy, as unexpected as the desire he felt, niggled at him infuriatingly. Without thinking, he had seated himself on the bed again, tired, he flopped down on the bedding. It was a damn sight better than a bedroll and cleaner than most places. “Damn the gold then. I’ll just steal something else.”

“I know of a fat man who has too many diamonds. Let’s kill him and take them.”

“You’re not my partner, you crazy devil. And I reckon you’d scam them off of me too.”

Daken crawled half over him, his now dry hair hanging like a curtain, shutting away the world beyond them. “I’ll give you the gold if you would have me.”

“Why are you asking me? We just met and I tried to kill you.” Lester blinked and started up at Daken’s now perfect face and fathomless eyes in the half-light. It made him think of a painted theatre mask, but just like Daken claimed to see what was beneath his smile, Lester had seen more than a few glimpses himself of the beast beneath Daken’s.

A soft whisper in the dark: “I like broken things…”

“…and I’m tired of being alone.”

Lester didn’t have a reply, instead he kissed those too soft lips and tasted the teeth behind them. It wouldn’t surprise him if Daken would rip his throat out with them, but neither did the fact that he didn’t.

Both of them went to sleep, knowing that they might not wake, but feeling safer for it. Any decisions of a future that might not come might as well be left for morning.

Chapter Text

Daken sipped his wine and watched his father on the TV screen, taking down human rebels for the Monarchy, as if he truly cared for their royal decrees. He, the bastard son who would never live up to his father’s exalted expectations, knew far too well his father’s hypocrisy; his hopes and fears, his bleeding heart that doubted every single step and kill on the way for mutant supremacy. Daken knew that James was stalling, holding back by only following orders, he had had the opportunity to wipe the resistance out several times.

It was pathetic.

“How fucking stupid are they?” Lester said behind him, his scent sharp and toxic, yet his presence a peculiar comfort.

“Desperation makes for foolish actions.” Daken sipped his wine and contemplated pointing out the similarities of his pet’s own predicament. He doubted that Lester would appreciate it however.

The famed Bullseye had lost his freedom months ago as the rise of the House of M had been truly established. Lester had attempted several assassinations together with the Human Resistance against the monarchy, and it had been a particularly bold and insane attempt that had landed him in Daken’s hands via his father. By right he should have been executed, but prudence had stayed his hand from rash or public action. Which might now truly prove in his favor.

An idea stirred in him and Daken found himself calculating the possibilities.

Lester frowned. “I don’t like the face you’re making. How badly you gonna screw me?”

Daken swatted him on the ass. “Mind your manners, sweetness.”

“Ain’t got any.”

Daken laughed and grabbed Lester’s arm, holding it tightly for a while, not so much a threat as a reminder.  “Normally, I like that bluntness of yours, but do remember your position, Lester. You have a death sentence hanging over your head, I am the only thing standing between it and you.”

Lester ignored the jab at his unofficial and disenfranchised status, the fact that he could be killed at any given moment had hardly left his mind, focusing at the issue at hand. “What do you want?”

“Co-operation.”

Lester bristled and tried to act as if it was business as usual. “I’ll kill them if that’s what you’re after, unless you want me to put a bullet in your dear old dad and blame it on them. I can do that too.”

“Why, aren’t you devious, darling. I like it when you try to anticipate my needs. Sadly…. no, I don’t need you to kill anyone. Quite the opposite.” Daken set aside his glass and pulled Lester into his lap with a harsh tug.

“Say what?” The assassin’s face settled in a half-concealed pout. He did have such pretty lips.

“As far as I know, your current… position is not public knowledge. Even if it was, it wouldn’t be hard to manufacture a situation where you’d seemingly regain your freedom. You did after all spend some time in our Monarchy’s dungeons before I got you out.” Daken caressed his chest and let his grip glide to his throat. “I think it’s finally time we take advantage of that ignorance. Reintroduce you to some old acquaintances.”

Lester’s pulse jumped. “You’d get me killed.”

“Not at all. You’d be in the honorable service of the Monarchy and I’d make sure that my father and a key number of his fellow morons knew that you were a double-agent. We’d get rid of that bothersome resistance once and for all and it’d be all our doing. I’d finally force my father’s hand to do what he’s been avoiding. And you’d probably finally be fully secure. A full pardon. Your position here official rather than a tentative stay of execution as a favor to a loyal retainer.”

“What makes you think they’d welcome me back for even a moment? I’ve been gone for months without a word. It’s not like they liked or trusted me in the first place.”

“Don’t argue me, pet. I’m certain that you can convince them, in the right circumstances. They are desperate, remember? They will want you back, they will see you as a last ditch Hail Mary to overthrow Magnus and the monarchy. You’ll be perfectly safe. I’ll keep you safe.” Lester trembled and Daken pressed a kiss to his throat.

“What choice do I have?” Lester muttered and let Daken kiss him. “I’m just your puppet, right? I’ll play along.”

“Oh sweetness, you’re not just anything. You’re mine.” Daken kissed him hard again and squeezed at his firm ass. “But you’re right that we need a little cover story for your absence. You’re a little bit too fit to have been rotting in a common holding cell or having been on the run. I doubt that it’d fly much better to tell them that you spent the past months as my pet either.”

Lester tensed and Daken could feel the shame and embarrassment roll off him in waves, he shoved his hands into his pants and fondled his ass, distracting Lester as well as pleasing himself. The assassin was still somewhat uncomfortable being a kept man, but it was rather endearing half the time. He was adorable when he blushed.

“Ah, I know. If I don’t misremember Medical Research was very keen on having a look at you. I’ve had to fend them off several times. They are still very interested in having a look at your adamantium and why you don’t suffer from the usual toxic shock symptoms. A combination of holding and medical, maybe. Have you on a medical prison transport, tragically killing the security transport crew and making a clean escape. Sound plausible enough?” Daken hummed and fingered Lester, the assassin was still somewhat slick from that morning’s entertainment.

Lester hissed and squirmed. “Thin, if you don’t actually let me do that. Also, they’d still think I’m a plant, or at the very least untrustworthy. I’d have to give them something. A location. A time. Ah-a, a win.” He moaned gritted his teeth at the increased pressure when Daken slipped in another finger.

“Really, now?”

“Yeah.” Lester whined and tried to spread his legs. “I need more lube. Please.”

“Go get it. When you come back I want you to tell me what you think we need to give them. Make it good, darling.” Daken slipped his fingers out and nearly lifted him off his lap, slapping Lester’s ass once more for good measure as he hurried off. The assassin was devious and street-smart, if anyone could be able to predict the paranoia of an underground resistance then it was him.

Daken leaned back in his cushy seat and raised his glass once more, sipping his red wine and savoring the spice and coffee flavor. It was a good year, a 1998 Château La Nerthe, if not overly extraordinary.

The newscaster was once more repeating the superiority of the mutant Monarchy over the terrorist humans. Daken grinned at the notion that it would be a human who would be the one to end the resistance once and for all, even if it was only as a tool. Then again, that was unfair. Lester was more than a tool or a puppet. Flatscan or not.

Daken drowned the sudden sentimental urge in his wine and told himself that Lester’s particular charms were appealing, but hardly something he was attached to beyond his usefulness. Thinking of those charms made Daken adjust his pants, feeling the pressing and distracting need to fuck, but tempering himself enough to wait. Still, the return of his pet was welcome and the flush on his cheeks made him want to just use his mouth instead, despite his previous plans.

“Come here, sweetness. Give that to me,” Daken said and took the pump of lube from him, setting it on the side table together with the wine. “Now, tell me.”

“I see two options. Either give them the alleged blacksite where I was kept, let them raid it with some success and either freeing captives or destroying valuable research.”

Daken hummed and tugged down Lester’s pants, kissing his erect cock and fondling his ass once more. “Go on.”

“Or give them intel. Give them enough information to hang themselves on it. Something too juicy for them to pass it up, despite risks. It needs to be verifiable. It needs to be true. It needs to be the break they’re waiting for without being too good to be true.”

Lester stopped, hips shifting as Daken brought his now slick fingers into him with a teasing movement, tense muscle relented and Lester trembled around him. Daken grinned and fucked him with his fingers, savoring the wet noise and Lester’s sharp breathing. Daken pulled up his tight t-shirt to bare his chest and hard nipples, licking at one.

“And–? Tell me, what would be juicy enough?”

“Something about Magnus. His movements, ah, a weakness, a time and place where they could strike–” Lester moaned and shook as Daken teased his insides, making his vision swim. Lube ran down his thighs and beads of sweat gathered on Lester’s scarred and furrowed brow. “The, ah, cemetery visits maybe.”

Daken’s eyebrows rose and he pulled Lester close, still fingering him, but taking a far more serious tone. “You know about those? Not even I knew until recently. Have you been naughty, Lester?”

Lester stilled, wild-eyed and suddenly very focused. “I– I haven’t. Please, Daken, I—”

“Sssh, I’m not angry at you. Just surprised. When and how?”

“Daken–,” Lester whined and tried to rise off his fingers, but Daken kept him still with a hand on his hip. “Your… family ignores me mostly, like an unwanted stray dog. I overheard your old man whining about security for those visits. He considered them ah - a risk.”

“Heh. He really does forget that the walls have ears. He’s the biggest security risk, really. He whined to me too after a few too many bottles. You did good, sweetness. I always want you to keep an eye and an ear on him.” Daken rewarded him with a kiss and the removal of his hand. “Ride me, Lester.”

Lester flushed deeper and removed his pants, kicking them aside and moving to tug off the tee as well, Daken stopped him mid-movement. The black fabric stood starkly against his skin and made his chest far more prominent, he wanted to keep that visual. Self-conscious, Lester climbed up in his lap again, unzipping Daken’s pants and freeing his cock. Deftly, he positioned himself over him and grabbed his cock, sinking down on it slowly.

“Very good. You always feel so good, sweetness. Tell me, which do you think is the better of your suggestions?”

Lester panted and rolled his hips, rising and falling smoothly, setting a slow pace. “Depends. How’s our time-table? How many people may die? How much risk do you want to involve? How much chance? Ah, fuck… You’ve got the three fuck-ups rule. Never let more than three things be outside of your control.”

“So through. That’s very attractive. Give me your preferred scenario.” Daken thrust up into him, but settled mostly into letting Lester do the work.

“Everyone dead. Drop enough intel to get a big meet and just flush them there. Kill the lot of them in a big strike. Sentinels, the royal guard, the whole nine yards. Just blood and guts everywhere.” Lester panted and rode him harder, hips jerking faster, his cock slapping against his thigh and stomach. Daken hummed and gasped, feeling heavy-headed in a way the wine hadn’t managed to accomplish. The slick, tight heat of Lester body tugging at him was maddening in the best way and he wanted nothing but to come.

But he wanted it to last.

“Why didn’t you suggest that first then?” Daken thumbed at Lester’s bobbing cock, smearing pre-come over the head and down his shaft. 

“Cuz, not easy. Not smart. Get me killed.” A broken staccato of words, Lester wouldn’t hold out very long, not when he was pushing himself this hard, but it was lovely to watch him try. He was sweat-slick and flushed, his chest heaving and his body trembling with both exertion and pleasure, sending pleasurable sparks through Daken who thrust up into him reflexively. Lester whimpered and twitched, spreading his ass cheeks with his hands to get him in deeper, riding him relentlessly.

“Such a pretty sight. Be smart for me, how would you do it?”

Wordless, Lester whined and jerked, breathing sharply and loudly, completely focused on fucking himself on him. Feeling slightly amused, Daken enjoyed the ride, Lester was so wet and tight around him that he didn’t mind being ignored. Shortly the other man started to lose the fast and precise pace to a jerkier and slower rhythm as he came closer to his release. Daken grabbed him by his hips and helped him keep going, steering him until Lester came apart, coming over the both of them and vainly trying to keep moving on Daken’s hard cock. 

“Be still, darling. Just hold tight and be still,” he told him and grabbed him by the waist, pulling himself up sitting and thrusting up into Lester. Lester gripped him tightly and held on as Daken fucked wetly up into his ass, moaning into his ear and clenching down on him. Daken came hard, come shooting in violent spurts, it then running down his shaft as Lester couldn’t help but try to ride him, smearing his thighs and dripping down on him.

Breathing hard, they both collapsed and Daken held onto Lester’s shaking body. Inanely, Daken reflected that he’d probably ruined both his pants and the upholstery of the armchair.

“You did very good, sweetness. Thank you,” Daken said and kissed Lester’s wet forehead, tasting the endorphin off him like a drug. “I think we’ll go for Plan C. Make it big and messy. I have the utmost confidence in you. Worst case scenario, I’ll have father drag you out of there when it goes down.”

A flash of fear under the haze. “Promise?”

“Promise.” Daken kissed him on his nose. He had no intention of letting Lester get himself killed nor captured again because of some ridiculous misunderstanding. He hadn’t been right after the first time. Daken would never put him through a second. He had spent far too much time mending him as it was.

A tapping noise behind them and a familiar voice,“Are you two finally done? You promised me that you’d drill me on the Academy exam, brother.”

“With you shortly, Laura. Let me get cleaned up,” Daken called out at his sister, who huffed and walked away, and watched Lester go completely scarlet. It really was endearing.

Chapter Text

Gabby snored as she slept. Not always, Laura had realized, but when she was comfortable. Jonathan the Wolverine snored with her. Laura stood and watched the closest thing she had to a little sister sleep. Her thoughts wanted to wander, and she wanted so much more for Gabby.

She herself had decided a long time ago that she would be something more. More than a weapon, more than a soldier, more than a victim. She had worked for it, with sheer grit and good friends she had made herself a part of a world that far exceeded the cage she was born into. 

Freedom had been terrifying, and the urge to crawl back into the cold comfort of not being a person had been a nagging voice in her for a long time after leaving the Facility. Death and pain had nearly made her go back into the perfect cold thing she had been molded into. Her skin still crawled at the memory of Arcade’s Murderworld. Not because it was difficult to fight for her life, but how easy it had been. Her body remembered, with or without the trigger scent. That is what still frightened her; how easy it would be to just let go and be a perfect tool. 

Gabby was another reason to hang on. Laura needed her not the be the best at what she did. It gave her hope that she too could be more. That together they could be so much more than perfect weapons.

Gabby shifted and Laura caught herself nearly leaving, telling herself that she was allowed to stay. That she was allowed to worry and to care for her little sister. She needn’t run away from the feeling and desire. 

       Why do you limit yourself?

She had asked Daken, her brother, years ago and watched him slowly, agonizingly, let go of some of those limits. Laura had discovered that there always was a new limit. A new boundary that she could push to become more than she had been. To be a hero and to feel like one, rather than a weapon wielded against a new target.

She wanted to have her perfectly broken little family with her. To break the molds they were made with and reshape themselves into something new. She saw that something new in Gabby, snoring and sprawled as she was.

Her blanket was on the floor. She had kicked it off. 

Laura moved quietly and lifted it off the floor, Jonathan’s ears moving at the motion, and spread in back on her sleeping sister.

Chapter Text

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“I assure you, there is nothing primitive about me.” Daken sneered and straighten his back fully, looking down his nose at his father’s hunched shape.

Logan snorted and glared right back at him, letting his look speak for him. Daken bristled internally but schooled his face into bland indifference as if his father’s accusations didn’t bother him in the least. He hated having to work with Logan, but needs must. This new world was strange and different, he needed all the allies he could get. Besides this was important for the both of them. 

The silence between them grew tense, waiting for the right moment to tear both their throats out.

Logan stared into the distance and then sighed, resigning himself to some decision he’d come to. “Son, I’m twice your age and I’ve lived a life that’s ten times that. I know exactly how close people like us live to the animal, regardless of how much control and humanity we build around it.”

“I think you’ve got me confused with someone else – someone who cares.”

“Just stating facts, kiddo. You’ll never escape it. Make peace with it.”

“That worked so well for Creed–”

“Son, I don’t care about the lip your giving me. I’ve seen you. You’re just like me when it comes to that.”

“I am nothing like you—”

“It’s what we are. I had hoped that you’d take after your mother and truly be nothing like me. But you are.” Logan stared down at his hands, fists clenching. “You got the blood-thirst. You’ve got the animal. Know it, learn it and accept it, but don’t let it win. If you do, well, then you will be like Victor.”

“If you’re done with the sanctimonious preaching, we did come here for a reason.” Daken sneered, forcefully keeping calm and collected as everything in his screamed to gut his dear old dad. That would have proven him right. He intended to cross his arms, but his missing limb made that impossible, he disguised the gesture by brushing off his shoulder.

Logan chuckled, darkly and squinted up at him in the half-light. “You feel it, eh?”

Daken sneered openly and ignored him, eyes focusing on the compound that contained their target. They weren’t of true concern in their current state, but anyone working with Weapon X tech and remains were a threat in principle. Daken had learned the hard way the consequences of anyone having his or any of his extended “family’s” genetics. It simply wasn’t acceptable.

“It’s not time yet. We need to get everyone, and they are late. We can’t have them be tipped off,” he replied instead. “Unlike you, I was trained in patience and strategy.”

“I understand exactly what you are trained to be.”

“You know nothing.”

Logan stared up at him with hard eyes. “I don’t need to. I told you that I can see you. Romulus wanted a dog to sic on me, he trained you like one. He kicked you until you knew when to jump out of his feet, when to take the blow, and when to whine and lick his hand.”

Daken saw red and drew his claws, lunging at Wolverine with pure force and rage. The steel grip on his arm was far faster than he ever expected and being thrown to the ground like a sack of potatoes far more humiliating. He was too easily unbalanced these days. Logan’s foot was firmly planted at his throat and his arm nearly pulled out of its socket.

“There, kid. There you have it. All that pain, that rage and that hurt. You’ve been boiling with it since this started. Since we met again. I was starting to think I’d have to punch you to get an honest reaction from you. You need to deal with it.” Logan stared down at him mercilessly, patronizing him and judging him with what he could only read as cold contempt. 

Logan scoffed and restrained him calmly. “I was baffled when you came to me. I asked myself if it was a trap. But then I scented you… you’re lost, kiddo. You can’t cling to hating me in place of actually having a life.”  Daken scrambled and struggled instinctively, but Logan held him still.

“I’m not asking you to stop hating me. Or to forgive me for killing you. Or for taking Romulus from you. Or even for dying myself, denying you everything. But your life has been run by other’s long enough, kid. Ain’t it time to grow up?” 

Daken growled and wanted to scream, he wanted to fight, he wanted to tear Logan’s throat out. Dying had done nothing to purge him from that rage, but he knew that it was a weakness now. He knew that Logan’s death would do nothing to sate it. He stilled… he submitted. Logan pulled him up to his feet and released him, sighing deeply and looking at him again. Daken was truly starting to hate how he stared at him. He hated the softness around those cold blue eyes, the tired brow and the deep wrinkles. Logan hadn’t returned from death untouched. 

But neither had Daken. 

“There are people down there that need to die.”

“Yes.” 

“We kill them. After… after we go our separate ways.”

“As you want, kiddo.”

“I don’t want to see you again.”

“You have a right to that.”

“This… this was a mistake,” Daken gritted out the words and wondered why he had reached out to his father in the first place when the world had rebirthed itself from the abyss. What drilled in need that driven him to run to him the moment he had the opportunity — like a good dog. He was suddenly deeply and sickeningly aware that that animal part of him, which he wanted to deny with every fiber of his being, didn’t quite know if Wolverine was his target or his master. Either made him want to hurl. 

Logan was right that he was lost.

“Maybe. But at least you made a choice, son. ”

Daken met his even gaze and held it as the moments ticked by, finally, he turned away and walked down the hill. He didn’t look back.

Chapter Text

“I can’t wait more than ten minutes because I’m having a bath tonight.” Daken crossed his arms and tapped his foot. The rest of the room’s occupants stared at him with varying degrees of annoyance and incredulity.

“We’re in the middle of an op here,” the team leader of the soldiers stated.

“And we’ve been waiting for 45 minutes. I’m out in ten.”

“We have orders–”

“And I have a date with an onsen.”

“You must be kidding–”

“We are live. I repeat, we are live.” Crackled over the coms and the mission was on. 

“Nine minutes, gentlemen,” Daken grinned and went for his target. He went through the first five enemy combatants like a hot knife through butter.

“Seven,” Daken hummed as the second wave came, he stabbed a man through his chest and eviscerated another. He spun into action, both literally and figuratively, a constant motion of death: a blade through an eye; a broken neck; a slit throat. 

Daken landed with a demi-plie. “Six.”

He breathed a moment and grinned at the remaining soldiers Norman had sentenced to death for one or another offense with this op. The next four minutes were a chaos of bullets and claws.

Daken stood among the bodies, splattered in blood and gore, wiping his face off with the back off his hand. “Two.”

The three remaining soldiers stood and stared at him, terrified and bemused. 

“Was that all?” Daken, straighten up and glanced at them. The highest ranking soldier nodded shakily.

“Good. One minute to spare.” Daken turned to leave, ignoring the sound of a third force coming. 

It would take them more than a minute to come after all.

Chapter Text

"I’m not going to lie to you. I want your babies.”

Daken blinked and stared at Johnny who was leaning heavily on him. “That’s anatomically improbable, but thank you.”

“You’re so pretty,” Johnny said in a very serious tone, “much prettier than most of my ex-girlfriends.”

“Yes, and you’re drunk.”

“That’s beside the point! We’d have the WORLD’S prettiest babies,” Johnny continued, obviously fixating on the idea, tugging at his hair to get his attention. “Because- because I’m very pretty too. Don’t you think I’m pretty?”

“The prettiest,” Daken conceded with a smile, dragging Johnny along the street, deciding against the next club in favor of heading toward the Baxter Building. Daken was starting to think that Johnny might have had more than just alcohol.

“I am super hot and very pretty,” Johnny repeated, satisfied. Daken hummed his agreement, adjusting Johnny’s weight over his shoulders rather than the awkward clutching of his arm.

“Daken, don’t lie to me,” Johnny suddenly burst out, grabbing his face with both hands and starring intently at him. “Wouldn’t our babies be beautiful like you?”

A small smile tugged at his lips and a hardness in his throat. Daken removed his hands gently and held them. “Yes, they would be very beautiful.”

Johnny stared at him and nodded slowly, then kissed his forehead. “Very.”

Satisfied, Johnny finally let himself he dragged along again. Daken sighed, surprised that he hadn’t lost his temper yet or been anything but patient with Johnny’s antics. He couldn’t leave him or be cruel, he still needed the boy, he reminded himself. He glanced at Johnny, taking in his drunken smile and shining eyes, and felt a smile tug his own lips once more.

However, it was for everyone’s best that they reached Baxter Building shortly as Johnny started singing.

That would be Ben’s problem, Daken thought vindictively.

Chapter Text

Matt sipped his cappuccino and waited patently at the cafe, he was early for his meeting with Kirsten. Court had ended quicker than expected with a speedy release of his client. Regardless, he felt uneasy. He’d felt off his game for days, as if his time was running out and something was waiting for him when it did. The noises of all the people around him were a loud hum that he barely managed to shut out, despite having chosen the most isolated seat and that it was far from rush hour. Matt focused on his coffee and its taste and scent, it was marginally soothing. He tuned in when quick footsteps close in on him, something achingly familiar about them but he could not place it. 

“Hi ya, Matty. Sorry I’m late, traffic was murder.” The person seated himself opposite him. The familiar voice set his entire body on edge, and it was barely that he withheld from lunging at him with all his might.

“Did I surprise you? That was ages since I managed that, not since… well… our last unfortunate meeting. I missed you though, did you miss me?” Bullseye said and reached forward with his hand over the table, catching Matt’s. Matt pulled back but Lester held him fast, and he could sense the smile on the crazed assassins face. Dread and rage pooled in Matt, but he held back.

Lester felt different though. Everything about him was just ever so slightly different from what Matt remembered. Then again, death and rebirth could do that to a man. There are so many questions that he could ask, but none of them seemed important compared to the fact that Bullseye was alive and well and in LA. That he had found him. That Kirsten was supposed to be there instead.

“What have you done to her?” He didn’t raise his voice. He did not shove his cane in Lester’s throat. He did not rage at him until there was nothing left.

“The girl? Nothing. Would you like me to?” Lester squeezed his hand and hummed, letting go as the quickstep of the waitress closed in on them. “Make a fuss, Matty, and she dies.”

“What can I do for you?” She was tapping her pen against paper and smelling sweetly of roses beneath the coffee. 

“Medium coffee. Black. And something sweet, give me what you like best,” Lester said in his most charming voice, pausing only ever so slightly, “–Mandy. Thank you very much.”

“Sure thing, I think we’ve got a cinnamon roll with your name written all over it. They are to die for. Anything else?”

“Nah, we’re good, Mandy.” 

His way of repeating the girl’s name drew chills from Matt, and he knew that there was no way this would end well if he didn’t act soon. Matt’s thoughts were racing; he needed an out, he needed answers, but foremost he needed to get Bullseye away from all these civilians. You never knew with the assassin when his mood would change and charm turned to murder. 

“So, as I was saying, Matty. We’ve had our time apart and it’s gotten me thinking, really prioritizing, and everything. I could have just killed you so many times, but who am I kidding? I like you best alive, and always looking over your shoulder for me. I like being the first and last thing on your mind. I like watching you when you don’t know I’m there, that little frown you get when you know that there is something out there -- but you can’t place it.”

“You’ve been following me.” The accusation left him like a bullet and everything about the past few days slipped into place. 

“I’m trying to have a heart to heart conversation here, Matty,” Lester chided him and crossed his arms petulantly. The assassins obsession with him was hardly news, but the threat of having failed to notice him stalking him for a week certainly was. Matt let his silence speak for him, stilling as Mandy was returning with the other man’s order.

“Here you go, coffee black and a cinnamon roll. It’s sinfully good,” she said, hovering slightly at Bullseye’s side, her heart beating a bit faster. Matt didn’t need to see to feel the amusement rolling off Lester as he toyed with her, smiling and leaning toward her. It made his stomach turn.

“Thank you, Mandy. I’m certain it is.” She lingered a little before leaving, relief flooding Matt at her absence. Lester dug into his order with relish, moaning happily at the taste.

“Damn, this is really good. You won’t believe how good it feels to eat again. Just biting into something sweet,” he said with his mouth full, stuffing more of the roll in his mouth, making short work of it.

“What do you think you’re doing, Lester?” Matt growled, clutching his cane.

“You’re not a very good listener. Do I have to spell it out for you? This is an invitation.” Lester licked his fingers.

“To what?”

“To continue our game.” Lester sipped his coffee, humming contently at the taste. His continued and blatant enjoyment made Matt’s hair stand at an end.

Lester shrugged once the silence drew out and raised his hand to wave Mandy back. “I’ll give you time, Matty, to think and mull and dread.”

Mandy hurried to their table with a skip in her step. “You’ve change your mind, hun?”

“Afraid not, I’m in a hurry. It was delicious though. Just the check please. I’m paying for the both of us.”

“Right away.” Mandy nodded and left, obviously disappointed, returning shortly and giving him the check. Matt didn’t fail to notice her write something extra on it. 

“Sorry, but no thank you. I like men,” Lester said with feigned remorse and paid, tipping generously and nudging his head toward Matt. Matt could feel himself and Mandy flush at his statement, she stammered apologies and he merely smiled, waving her excuses away.

“I’ll be seeing you, Matty. Think about me.” Lester stood and leaned toward him, kissing his cheek and grinning cruelly, whispering just as he left: “I never stopped thinking about you. Just wait and see. ”

Matt’s cane snapped and his heart skipped a beat. Lester walked away, whistling happily.

Their game had started.

Chapter Text

Waking in the infirmary, Daken remembered little of what happened after the fight with the scorpion like creatures. He had been scraped off the floor nearly as much of a gory mess as the things he’d killed. The sight and smell of his own intestines still disgusted him, and he was grateful that he’d been unconscious for the most of it. He was, however, very curious to know why the hell his entire gut felt two sizes too big. Had he regenerated a new set of viscera and healed over the injured organs, trapping them inside of him in a rotting mess? Daken sneered and cursed himself; he had no desire of eviscerating himself. It was always so frightfully messy. Maybe he should get the doctors to do it for him.

He probed his bulging stomach with his hand, disgusted by the distension and the nauseating feeling. It felt like everything was pressing on his bladder in the most aggravating fashion. It would definitely have to go.

“Holy shit! It’s true!” Mac cried out from the door, scampering up to the bed and nearly poking his stomach. “That’s so gross, man.”

Daken looked up and frowned; he had neither heard or scented Gargan’s arrival. Considering how bad the man smelled - like fermented garbage and blood - that was surprising. “I’ll just cut it out.”

“Harsh, then again I don’t see you as the nurturing type.”

Daken stared and raised an eyebrow. “What are you talking about? Wait, are you actually that thick? I’m not pregnant.”

“Technically speaking, you are.” Bullseye interjected from the doorway, leaning casually against it with an amused grin. “You’re having a brood baby.”

“Hey, I thought you’d just done it bareback too often with this here freak,” Mac added, and barely avoided getting his ass kicked by Lester by jumping up on the ceiling. Daken ignored him. 

“Those creatures?” Daken recognized the name from the briefing and something ominous about their egg-laying habits. 

“You’re the baby mamma for a bunch of flesh-eating alien bugs. Mazel tov,” Lester cheerfully informed him once he’d scared away Mac into a corner. “I bet they’ll eat you from the inside before you have to worry about it much.”

Daken stared at him flatly and drew his claws, ripping out the iv and the monitoring equipment quickly. “They go out now.”

“But Norman wanted them for experiments or something. He’ll be mad,” Mac protested from the ceiling. Daken stared him straight in the eye and stabbed himself.

“I’m pregnant, not brain damaged. There is no way in hell I’m going through with this. Norman can impregnate himself if he’s so keen on it,” he hissed and slashed the blade up, teeth gritted and nausea nearly making him vomit. He didn’t let up until his stomach was an open wound and he ripped out the carapace creatures nestled inside, vision swimming and his body screaming. 

“That’s hardcore,” Bullseye hummed appreciatively. Daken killed one by ripping its head of while holding eye-contact with Lester. The assassin stared back at him with lust in his bright blue eyes. Daken smiled, all teeth and blood, and threw another one of the creatures at his feet.

“Kill it,” he hissed and spat blood on the floor, not that it made much of a difference as it was already decked in his blood and gore.

“With pleasure,” Bullseye responded and stabbed it through with a knife. Daken relished in the crack and splatter, his head light and clouded, flashing Lester a pleased smile. Still grinning victoriously, he searched his open but already healing guts for any more eggs or hatchlings. He was barely holding onto consciousness and convulsing violently. Daken barely felt Lester stick his hand into him and pull out a last one that had clung to his spine, despite the fact it should have been sheer agony. 

"Th-thank you–” The blood loss was too much for him and he passed out.

Daken woke up to Norman’s screeching; it was immensely satisfying. 

Chapter Text

“You know, it’s okay to cry.”

Bullseye focused his bleary and pain distorted vision on that smarmy fucker Daken. “Go die in a fire.”

“What and deny you that pleasure?” Daken hummed and his hand hovered over his injured hip before caressing his thigh instead. It still hurt like a motherfucker. Bullseye muffled a curse and bit his tongue. 

“You know, you’re very attractive when you bleed,” Daken said it in a conversational tone, but his hand slid up to his hip again and fingers pressed at his wound, coaxing more blood out of him. His eyes were locked on the blood.

“What can I say, I’m a handsome devil,” Bullseye said to get his attention, once Daken’s gaze met his, he spat him in the face. Daken barely blinked as the thick glob hit his cheek and then shoved his nails into the wound. This time Bullseye couldn’t muffle the cry that left him.

“Very pretty indeed,” Daken agreed and wiped his face off with a bloodied hand. “I want to see how you look with tears in those pretty baby blues; I haven't stopped thinking about it since I first saw you. I’m thinking it would be exceedingly attractive.”

“In your dreams, fuckface. I’ll have your ass six feet under–”

“I know you’re very fond of my ass, but I think I’ll be selfish today.” Daken punctuated his statement with another dig at his wound. Bullseye was pretty sure he could feel it to the bone. He screamed and fought back -- fuck his broken arm and the blood loss -- but Daken pinned him down and was pressing at everything that hurt. Any injury he inflicted healed before his eyes as if nothing had happened.

“You’ll never get away with this.” But he knew that Daken already had. The mission had gone sideways and Bullseye knew that he was a mess of broken bone and deep wounds: he would never get anywhere on his own. He was at Daken’s mercy and the fucker had decided to play with him. He’d be lucky if the coward didn’t kill him.

“Don’t worry, darling. I’ll let you live. Didn’t want to miss this opportunity, however.”

“To show off how much of a freak you are?” Hissed from between clenched teeth, his entire body screaming.

“Considering what you do for fun, sweetness, I doubt that you’re in any position to judge. I heard you when you got to play with the Spider. First I thought you were fucking him, you know. But you were just playing with your pretty blades. Do you sound like that when you fuck, Lester? Should we try to find that out for ourselves?” The mutant drew his claws out and caressed his body with them, then licking the blood off bone, obviously enjoying himself. Bullseye shivered and it felt like his blood was leaving his body even quicker, morbid fascination locked his gaze with Daken’s claws, and a part of him wanted to give Daken whatever he wanted if it mean that he’d live.

“Does that excite you, sweetness? I know you play rough.” Daken smiled, grinding down at him, making every movement flare with agony. Bullseye opened his mouth to scream, but Daken’s pressed their mouths together and swallowed his cries. He bit down at his lips, but the mutant didn’t seem to care. Blood flowed into his mouth and Bullseye choked on it, coughing and spluttering.

“Don’t bite more than you can swallow, Lester.” Daken grabbed his jaw roughly, giving him a mockery of a kiss and licking the blood off him. 

“I’ll. Kill. You.”

“Feel free to do your best. I’m looking forward to it.” Daken swiftly unbuckled both of their pants, tugging them slightly down, the movement drew entirely new spikes of pain out of him and a sickening awareness of his own exposure. But there was nothing he could do to fight him, they only thing he could think of was to deny him the pleasure of seeing him cry.

However Bullseye didn’t hold back his screams as Daken entered his broken body, or when he started to thrust into him, spreading his legs wide with his blood smeared hands digging into open wounds. Breathing heavy and cursing Daken with every breath he had, Bullseye tried to ride it out best as he could, escaping into his own head. Zoning out the pain, the humiliation and the fear. Agony ripped him out, incoherent screaming was all he managed as he was pulled back to his broken body and Daken’s attentions. His broken arm was further twisted than it had been, high pitched giggling left him once the endorphin kicked in.

He couldn’t help finding it hilarious. 

“Oh sweetness, I need you to stay here,” Daken ordered and palmed his dick, jerking him off to the rhythm of his fucking. Bullseye giggled and wheezed, swallowing deep breaths when he could, submitting to the cruel treatment with a shaky nod. It was no longer as raw, being fucked, and his arm overshadowed all of the other pain.

“So pretty,” Daken mused and kissed the corner of his mouth, licking him once more after with a long drag of tongue over his jaw and cheek. “I was right that you sound the same–” He whispered in Bullseye’s ear before biting him, barely moving otherwise. Bullseye felt limp and his arm was on fire, he didn’t have any more screams to give, but Daken seemed satisfied by the small whimpers and sporadic hysterical giggles. His world was pain and movement, Daken’s kisses and hand on his cock an unwelcome contrast of soothing pleasure. He could barely breathe and it felt like it would never end.

Then it did.

Bullseye as much as heard was much as felt Daken pull out with a wet noise, feeling his own blood and Daken’s come run out of him as he did. It sickened him and he nearly vomited at the sensation and the smell.

“Let’s see what we can do about this,” Daken said and firmly grabbed his blood smeared cock, jerking him off in a few long strokes before taking him in his mouth and sucking him off until he was at the edge, making him come over himself in a sticky mess. Bullseye was already so light headed from the pain and the shock to his system that it was a miracle that he remained conscious. 

“Ah, there you are, Lester,” Daken said softly, his bloodied fingertips wetly touching his cheek, wiping away a tear. With that Lester had nothing holding him back and tears ran down his face, he sobbed and whined loudly, his body in tremors and fresh pain.

“It’s okay, sweetness. Cry as much as you need,” Daken said sweetly and cradled his broken body in his arms. Lester howled and sobbed, clutching him with his functioning hand and burying himself in him.

“–-kill me.” The words left him with a stutter and a sob, bile in the back of his throat.

“There, there, dear,” Daken soothed him and rubbed circles along his back, kissing his blood and tear streaked cheeks. “Don’t say things like that.”

“Then leave me here to die, I’ll do it myself.” Tremors still wrecked his body and he knew that it wouldn’t take too much effort to finish the job. He’d be sick for days even if he survived.

“Why would I ever do something so silly? You’re mine.”

“I’ll kill you.” It was a soft and broken promise.

“I’m looking forward to it.” Another kiss and caress before Daken scooped him up and carried him with him toward transport. Before passing out, all Lester could think of was that Daken smelled nice.

Chapter Text

Chapter Text

 “I can’t believe I’m sitting in space jail with you of all people.” Deadpool declared and bounced on his heels, far too excited considering the circumstances. “I mean I’ve tried to reach you on Earth, the odds of randomly bumping into you in space are, like, astronomical.”

“Hello,Wade.” Cable smiled despite himself. It felt like it had been a long time since he did that. Then again the Marc with the Mouth had always known how to make him smile.

“Should we like discuss our relationship since we’re trapped together and resolve our issues and annul our divorce like they do in all locked room scenarios on the silver screen? Revealing that it was all a misunderstanding and that we’ve grown as people and overcome our differences. Oh, we can blame it on your Evil Twin clone brother.” Wade smiled but Nathan wasn’t deaf to the bitterness nor the underlying hope.

“It’s good to see you.”

“Well, you’re looking as hunky as you always did in that silverfox way. I can’t complain. How’s Hope?”

“She’s taken over my team and forcefully retired me.”

“Good girl. A chip of the old block.” Wade cheered, a somber undertone in his voice however. “I’m a single father now too. Her name is Ellie and she’s beautiful and has a mean right hook.”

Nathan blinked and smiled. “You have pictures?”

“D’uh!” Wade rolled his eyes, the gesture visible beneath his mask due the exaggeration. He pulled forth a case and opened it, it contained half a dozen pictures of a happy girl with wild curls. She had Wade’s smile.

Nathan knew that Wade wouldn’t hear it so he said the next best thing. “She’s beautiful.”

“Yeah, doesn’t get that from me though. So, we ditching this place?”

“No hurry.” Nathan shrugged, he was tired of killing. It felt strange to realize that.

“That bad huh.”

They sat in silence and soon Nathan felt compelled to talk. “I’ve killed a lot of people over the past few years. I wanted to make the world cleaner for her.”

“Me too. But that wasn’t why we did it.”

Nathan flinched and felt ashamed. “I hope that she can look me in the face one day.”

Wade hummed and nodded, putting his arm over his shoulders. “I know a mean space taco place. How about I buy you a beer? For old times sake.” 

“For old times.”

They busted out of space jail and nobody died. Nathan felt like it was the first time he could breathe in years. 

Chapter Text

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There had been shouting and accusations, tears even under the rage, and Daken had calmly sat through it and told his side of the story. He didn’t feel calm, but he hadn’t known what else to do. There was a strange awareness that he should do something. Daken blamed Laura. She was always prodding him to do something. She’d gotten him to come to the Fantastic Four in the first place. Vouched for him and gotten them to help him yet again. Sitting on that lab table for the fourth time and letting Reed do what he did, felt like deja vu all over again. Like he’d never left it or that it was forever the first time.

Johnny was still upset.  

His scent was in turmoil. He kept pleading and shouting. It felt meaningless, but Daken wanted it to stop. He was tired. He’d never been this tired before. Not even when the drugs were tearing him apart. He felt like he was forever dying. 

“Don’t you have anything to say for yourself?” Johnny said, breathing heavy, moments from burning. He was so close, close enough that his heat was tangible. 

Daken sighed and leaned forward into his chest. Johnny startled and began to pull back, only to stop. Tentatively, he put a hand on Daken’s head. 

“Shit man, you’ve got to stop doing this.”

Daken breathed in him, heat and mixed emotions. Affection. The silly boy felt affection for him. It nearly made him laugh.

“Do you ever listen to me, Daken?”

Always. He always listened. 

“Damn me. Please… please just stop doing this to me.”

A promise he’d never agree to. 

“Heh. I should know better by now, shouldn’t I?” 

He really should, the foolish boy.

Johnny held his head in his hands, petting his outgrown mohawk, feeling the stubble with light fingers. It was… pleasant. Soothing. 

Daken let his breathing slow. He was just so tired. He would steal this moment of respite. He let himself relax if just for a moment. It was stupid. It was weakness. But for a single moment, he

would let himself have it. 

“Stay with me.” The words left him in a whisper, spoken into Johnny’s chest, nearly drowning in his heartbeat. Daken wanted to swallow those treacherous words and to run, to push Johnny away with venom and spite. 

“I will.”

Daken felt like breaking and closed his eyes. This was fine. He’d let it hurt.

Johnny caressed his hair and let him rest on him there. 

Chapter Text

Daken had played his game with Johnny for ages, but he still hadn’t figured out what made the boy truly tick when it came to it. He could play him like a fiddle, read him like a book, but he still hadn’t been able to find what would make the boy fall for him body as well as soul. Oh, he could smell the desire and affection off him alright. But Johnny for one or another reason never acted on it. Daken would have suspected him asexual hadn’t it been for the fact that he’d gone through women like he did clothes.

It was starting to become frustrating. 

He finally found his solution when he was visiting Baxter Building one night and Valerie had fried the electrics of the entire city block with her EMP bomb. The Fantastic Four, and then some, rushed to solve the problem, but Daken and Johnny were locked in a room as the electric locks slammed shut as the lights went out.

“What in the world–?” 

“I’m guessing either super villains or science. The lack of screaming should indicate science,” Johnny said calmly, desensitized as he was of living in the most famous superfamily in New York. 

“Fine then, you know how to get out?”

“Nope. It’ll be fine though. They’ll have us out in a few hours.”

“Ever the optimist.”

“That’s me. Sunnier and hotter than the sun.”

Daken laughed at the wry tone in Johnny’s voice, patting him on the arm for the offense of that joke. He didn’t expect Johnny to take his hand nor the spike in his scent.

“I could light this room up right now if you wanted me to,” Johnny told him in a low voice, thick with emotion. Daken stilled and wondered what had gotten into the boy.

“But, if I don’t… can I kiss you instead?” Johnny’s voice trembled and his scent was a mess. That was not what Daken had expected and his mind raced to figure the situation out. 

“You can do that with the lights on, Johnny.” It was meant as a teasing statement, but the pregnant silence it resulted in sent Daken in for another surprise.

“… I can’t.” Johnny’s voice as hushed and he reeked of shame. Daken bristled, the implication that Johnny was too ashamed of kissing him felt insulting. Oh, Daken had fucked his share of self-hating men who couldn’t be caught dead with him. But coming from Johnny… that nearly hurt.

“You want me to be your dirty little secret, Johnny?” It was delivered with a purr, cruel in its saccharine tone. 

“No! Please, don’t–- I wouldn’t do that to you. It’s not like that.” Johnny grabbed him by both arms, fumbling a bit in the dark. He sounded like he was going to cry, but he still smelt like desire. Just touching him seemed to send sparks up Johnny.

“Then what’s it like?”

“…I just can’t… with the light. It feels like everyone’s watching me. Like there is going to be yet another camera in my face. Like I’m acting for the press and everyone is there to watch. It’s not for me anymore. Or for you. Just just light and cameras, photographs and TV interviews, all on tape for everyone. I.. I just want you for us – for me.”  Johnny was shaking but he seemed to need to talk, Daken remained silent. 

“I’m not ashamed of you. I’m ashamed that I  can’t do… this any other way. I’m ashamed that I freeze up in my own home if I can see more than shadows because that means that there might be a camera that can see me. My life has been on camera since forever. I can’t do anything without millions of people seeing it. I don’t mind people knowing I just— I just  want something for me… I’m so sorry, I know this is so selfish and fucked up…”

Daken kissed him. Johnny froze for a second and then kissed him back, hard and needy. Daken broke the kiss once it became clear that Johnny got the damn hint.

“No lights, got it. Is the locked door and emp blast necessary too?”

“I– I eh… no, not really,” Johnny stuttered.

“Pity that you won’t be able to admire my handsome looks, but I can see well enough.” Daken nipped at Johnny’s lips, Johnny’s heart skipped a beat.

“Seriously, you’re cool with— this?”

“Yeah, why not? Have you ever tried if it works with you blindfolded?”

Johnny choked, much to Daken’s amusement. “Ah, no… but seriously? I can’t even… get it on with you if the light is on—”

He kissed him again to stop him from babbling nonsense.

“I once slept with a woman who couldn’t “get it on” unless she was trussed up and suspended – it took nearly an hour to get her ready. Another man who couldn’t if he wasn’t bleeding. A third who wanted to pretend to be an animal. No lights are a very easy and vanilla request.”

“Okay, now I’m actually a bit offended.”

“Offended enough to stop?” Daken kissed his neck and fondled his ass.

“Hell no. But I, I need to hear that you’re okay. I didn’t mean to make you think that I was ashamed,“ Johnny pleaded and held him still. Daken rolled his eyes, safe in the knowledge that Johnny couldn’t see him.

“I’m perfectly fine. You just… caught me by surprise.”

“Okay. Can I kiss you now?”

“Yes, do that. I don’t know how long we have before Ben rushes in to save you. Poor dear will be heartbroken.”

“Dude… don’t make me laugh! Or think about Ben.”

“Don’t call me dude and we have a deal.”

Chapter Text

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“I’m not wearing this. I’m three seconds from flashing my cock.”

“The skirt is short on purpose. You look great; you have the legs for it. I doubt that anyone would complain even if you did where we’re going.” Daken looked at Lester with a grin, checking him out in the skimpy outfit he’d coerced him into wearing. Technically it was a tunic; a replica of an old Hawkeye costume even. But in practice it was a mini skirt and a vest.

“I hate you,” Lester hisses and crossed his arms defensively.

“Naturally. But you lost our bet. That means you’re going out with me and dressed as I want you to be.” Daken purred and adjusted his own hot-pants and boots, which was the entirety of his own outfit discounting the mask.

“You could have said anywhere, why the fucking Pride Parade? It’s not like you care about shit like that despite being the biggest indiscriminate fucker ever.”

“Because it bothers you and amuses me. Also, I’m very discriminating in my choices, darling. I just don’t think gender is a relevant factor,” Daken said, and let his eyes linger on Lester’s strong thighs. “Think of it this way, everyone will be looking at you and worship your gorgeous body. Don’t worry though, I’ll protect your… assets.”

“Hate YOU. I should kill you for this.” His arms uncrossed and balled into fists at his sides, but Lester didn’t try to avoid or attack him as Daken sauntered up to him.

Daken grinned and gave him a peck on the lips. “You’d miss me, darling.”

“Not for a moment.” Lester spat, but his eyes were lingering on Daken’s body and his tattoo drew down Lester’s gaze to his groin. 

“No. Just for the rest of your life,” Daken remarked and kissed him, his hands up his skirt, grabbing at his ass and crushing them together. “I’m really loving the access here. Wanna go for a ride, darling?”

Lester flushed and his cock jerked.

“I’ll take that as a yes,” Daken said and licked his lips.

Chapter Text

“I love mornings here,” Johnny grinned, spreading his arms as if to embrace the clear morning air and the rising sun in the horizon. The first golden rays making it seem as if the blond man was already aflame, his bright blue eyes shining brighter still.

“It’s beautiful,” Daken agreed, leaning on the rail of the roof and starring into the riot of colors that painted the sky, averting his eyes from the first rays of dawn and the young man, oh he was so young, worshiping the light like salvation. Such foolish affection.

Daken had not so much stayed the night but appeared in the middle of it, creeping in with the midnight shadows and slipping through all defenses. 

Or nearly all.

Daken glanced at Johnny, letting his brightness take his breath away. Foolish, he chided himself once more and pretended that he wasn’t hoping things that he could never have. He had a chosen path in life, a much darker destiny, and he couldn’t see Johnny walk it with him, not as bathed in light as he was.

“I just love it,” Johnny said, smiling at him and Daken still felt like someone had knocked the air out of him. 

“You said you had a meeting…?” Daken asked instead, trailing off as words were difficult to form. Johnny cocked his head as if in question, waited a beat, and chuckled to himself. 

“That’s later. I just like early mornings, thank you for getting up with me.”

“It’s nothing. I don’t sleep much.”

“No. I mean, thank you. I enjoy your company - I usually want to be alone here, but it’s better with you.”

“I… you’re welcome. The feeling is mutual.”

With another happy laughter and a crooked grin, Johnny slung an arm over his shoulders and stared back at the sun. Daken tensed under his touch but relaxed as Johnny just… let him get used to it. No tension, no pressure, nothing sexual nor any expectations. Just a half embrace and a pleasant presence.

Johnny was warm.

Daken breathed in and looked at the sunrise. He caught the look that Johnny gave him from the corner of his eye, a warm and kind look over a smile and wind tussled hair. 

What did he want from him? 

But all Daken could scent or read was contentment. Johnny did nothing but soak in the sun. 

“Hey, let’s go in for breakfast. I do killer pancakes,” Johnny told him once the sun had bathed the sky and chased away the last vestiges of night. Another 200-watt smile and his arm slipped off his shoulders, tussling his hair playfully, and grabbing his hand. 

Unbidden, a smile crept on Daken’s face as well and he let himself be lead into the Baxter Building. 

Today, he’d let himself forget the path he’d chosen. 

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There was something about their mandatory communal breakfasts that  always reminded Bullseye of high school in the worst possible way. All the clicks, gossiping and targeted bullying at anyone who showed weakness. As such there were rather strict rituals around breakfast; little territories defended with fury, certain ways to approach things, and pecking orders that were ironclad – until the moment someone screwed up.

The moment anything was out of place in their carefully choreographed dance and bicker, everyone reacted.

Daken was breaking Bullseye’s flow. He’d been arguing with Mac, with Karla playing both sides, and when that balance had shifted in Mac’s favor, Daken should have been there with some suggestive remark. He wasn’t.

Instead, the annoying mutant was hanging by the balcony, eating an apple in an unnecessarily messy way. Fruit juice ran down his chin, and he chewed and sucked at the fruit carelessly.

It was intensely aggravating.

“Hey, asshole. You gonna eat, or are you watching your figure?” Bullseye hollered. “Or are you just thinking of jumping? If so, tell me so I can watch.”

Daken ignore him, tossed the apple and sauntered off like nothing happened.

“Oooh, Daken’s mad at you.” Mac chimed in with a grin. Karla frowned and looked calculatingly at Daken’s turned back.

“Fuckhead’s up to something,” Bullseye said, glancing at her in affirmation. Without further ado, Bullseye slipped out after the mutant with violence on his mind.

Daken was ahead of him, constantly slipping out of view as the corridor twisted, and Bullseye, to keep up with him, had to quicken his pace. The bastard was deliberately making him chase him. But, he wasn’t going to be evaded so easily. However, Daken was fast and quiet, it was nearly impossibly hard to keep up with him. It shouldn’t have been that difficult. Bullseye had no idea where he was going, or what was even the point of this cat and mouse game. He felt compelled to follow Daken regardless.

Bullseye jumped a floor in the stair case, Daken should have been there but all he could see was a door closing. A smile grew on his face, and he continued his pursuit. Hunting the mutant was more fun than he expected.

Finally, after several minutes more of playing tag with Daken’s shadow, somewhere in the lower levels of the Tower dedicated to storage, Daken stopped. Just stopped in the middle of the room, his back turned to Bullseye, absolutely still and quiet. Bullseye assumed that this was Daken’s chosen battle ground, and warily looked for any signs of a trap or ambush.

Tense seconds rolled by, and neither man moved.

“Well, darling? We gonna do this or not?” Bullseye mocked and unsheathed a knife, slouching languidly in the most arrogant display of confidence he could muster. “I don’t have all day. And you can’t expect me to do all the work. That would be very unfair.”

“You’re the one who followed me.” Daken said, without turning to face him. All he had to judge the mutant’s mood was the tenseness in his shoulders and the the acid in his tone. But it was clear that Daken had actually tried to get rid of him.

“Huh. Fancy that.” Bullseye said, toying with the knife. “I who thought we had something special.” He had no intention of letting Daken bow out now, not after that merry little chase. Fucking tease.

“How rude of me.” Daken hissed, and there was anger in his voice.

Bullseye raised a brow at this and tightened his hold on the knife, starting to shift to the left. “Panties in a twist?”

“You’re wasting my time, Lester.” Daken sneered, looking over his shoulder at him.

“Should have thought about that before stringing me along.” Bullseye said, the innuendo slipping out effortlessly with pent up excitement. He wanted to see Daken hurt; he wanted to feel it. The mutant’s reluctance and obvious anger just fed this desire.

“That’s your problem. Go jerk off.” Daken growled and walked away.

“Oh I’m so sorry. Did I offend your delicate sensibilities?” Bullseye jeered and intercepted his path in a quick stride. “You’re usually so willing. Practically throwing yourself at me. What gives? Don’t I give you enough attention? Cut you up like I used to?”

Daken grabbed him by the throat, forcing him back in a quickstep until they hit the storage crates. The knife clattered uselessly to the floor.

“You– you want flowers?” Bullseye choked and grinned, delighted by the rage in Daken’s eyes and tight hold.

“I could kill you.” Daken said, controlling himself and forcing his features to soften. Bullseye could still see the fire in him, the tension and madness around his eyes. Whatever or whoever it was had pissed Daken off royally, put him off his game and left him raw. A 100$ bucks on that Wolverine had something to do with it.

“Did Daddy give you a spanking again?” Bullseye wondered. Daken punched him in the gut. Bastard owed him a 100$.

“Back off, Lester, before I decide that I don’t care about Osborn’s little rules.” Daken whispered in his ear, his breath warm and sour, leaning in close. Fucking careless moron. Bullseye head butted him with a blow that left his own ears ringing. Daken unhanded him and stumbled to the side, a deep cut on his brow healing even as blood washed his face.

Grinning, Bullseye pulled two new knives and threw them at Daken’s still disoriented figure. It was rare for the feral mutant to be this off his game. He had every intention of enjoying it while it lasted.

Daken screamed as the knives tore his flesh and charged, claws drawn and ready. Bullseye threw himself aside and flanked the enraged mutant, hamstringing him. The scream that Daken choked on and the less than graceful save he did to avoid tumbling to ground, all testified to his unbalanced state of mind.

“C'mon, at least try to hit me, sweetness. See, right here’s a good spot.” Bullseye taunted and pointed at the bull’s-eye on his forehead.

“Fuck Osborn.” Daken snarled and leaped, going for a killing blow, the third true blade in his arm unsheathing with a wet noise of blood splattering on the floor. Bullseye tumbled, falling on his feet in a low crouch, and heard the blow that had been meant for him scrape cement.  Fear for his life sent adrenaline pumping through him in earnest. He pulled a knife from it’s sheath, it was his last from that particular holster. He’d need more space to access the others.

“That’s more like it, Junior. Daddy would be proud.” Bullseye said and countered a blow to his face with a cut to Daken’s lower arm, aiming to cut tendons, but taking a shallow stab to his side. They held position for a few seconds, blood running freely from their wounds. Daken’s face was a mask of rage and pain, it was glorious, and Bullseye couldn’t help but laugh.

Daken was the one to break the standoff, turning abruptly, cutting up both his own arm and Bullseye’s chest as he cleared some space between them. Rage still obvious on his face, Daken was visibly fighting his own instincts and blood thirst. Why the hell he would do that, was beyond Bullseye.

“No need to fight it, darling. we’re just getting started.” Bullseye urged him and chuckled. “Don’t leave me all hot and bothered here.”

“I am not him.” Daken gritted from behind clenched teeth, crouched and hunkered, blood dripping from his arms.

“I think you make a good passing resemblance – prettier though.” Bullseye said with a grin and circled Daken, twirling his knife in elaborate patterns. Daken snarled at him; he was shaking and breathing heavily.

“I am not an animal. I am not insane.” Daken hissed, eyes flashing. Bullseye got a feeling that the mutant wasn’t just talking to him. There was something more going on here. Not that he cared. He just wanted Daken to fight him like he meant it.

“Keep telling yourself that, Daken. You’re a mutt eating scraps at Osborn’s table.” Bullseye said, deliberately trying to goad the mutant into a rage once more. “If you’re good, and wag your tail, he might scratch that itch of yours.”

Bullseye could pinpoint the moment that Daken lost it to rage again. The shift it his eyes was obvious – as was the lightning fast series of blows that sent Bullseye flying back like a rag doll. At first, the pain didn’t even register, but as he crashed into a loading table, metal cutting into his lower spine like a knife, it was pure hell.

Crying out and trying to go for his weapon, Bullseye scrambled for some kind of cover. He didn’t get far as claws cut across the side of his head, scraping of on the metal in his skull painfully, causing him to stumble against the table face first. Bullseye pushed back with his hands, but Daken had a hold of his neck, keeping him bent over and pressed to the table.

Bullseye expected to feel claws against awkward parts of his anatomy but Daken merely kept him there, helplessly pinned and bleeding. He was still shaking and his breathing was loud.

“You want to scratch my itch, Lester? You want to fuck me – or be fucked by me?” Daken asked him, his voice low and tense, his body a hot and trembling weight over his back. “You want me to be an animal for you, sweetness?”

Bullseye realized that he might not have thought this all the way through. But he still had the urge to keep digging.

“Go ahead. You’re all talk, Daken.” He grunted and forced a laugh, saliva and blood painted the table and then smeared on his cheek as Daken pressed him down. “You keep on talking, never doing. Fucking man up, you pussy ass faggot.”

Daken replied by ripping down his pants, unbuckling and unzipping his own. The sound was nearly Pavlovian to Bullseye, who struggled and bucked in burgeoning panic. He howled profanities at Daken, working his way through English before sprinkling it with a choice few of Japanese that he remembered, just for good measure, in case the mutant wasn’t paying attention.

Daken banged his head against the metal table and clutched it in a vice grip, while pressing his fucking dick against Bullseye’s naked ass.

“Is this what you wanted, Lester? Or, would you prefer if I made you want it first? I could, you know. I could make you beg me to fuck you like a whore.” Daken told him, grinding against him. Bullseye could feel him harden, and he felt like vomiting.

“Fuck you,” Bullseye spat, blood dribbling from his mouth from the cut on his lip and where he had bitten himself to keep from screaming. He was trembling now; everything hurt, fear ate at him, choked him. He felt like laughing.

“Brave little man,” Daken murmured, again hovering just above his ear, fever hot and terrifying. “I was trained to break brave little men. Just like I was broken. I could make you into anything I wanted. I could even make you love me for it.” Daken hardened his grip, nails cutting into Bullseye’s neck, making blood flow down his throat.

“Luckily for you, darling, I am not an animal. I am not him.” Daken said, voice breaking slightly at the last statement. Bullseye was pretty sure he wasn’t talking about Wolverine anymore. But fuck if he cared.

“Thank me, Lester. Say you’re sorry.” Daken ordered him in a more controlled fashion and shook him by the neck.

“–I’m sorry you’re an asshole. Thanks for nothing, shithead.” Bullseye coughed and grinned.

Daken scoffed at him. Then there was nothing. Daken was no longer holding him down or grinding his ass. In an awkward dance, Bullseye dragged his pants up, got his knife and scrambled to face the mutant. Daken was fully dressed again, staring at him impassively.

Bullseye stared back, collecting his own wits about him, trying to understand what had happened. He should be angry, but instead he just felt drained. He sighed and slumped against the leg of the table, his wounds were hurting - he’d forgotten the pain when he’d been convinced that Daken would rape him. It wouldn’t have been the first time someone had. Idly, Bullseye wondered what had made him bottle up all that rage, and what had made him stop.

“What now, fuckface?” Bullseye asked and poked at his own wounds, assessing the damage. Nothing immediately life-threatening, but he would need medical. When he looked up, Daken wasn’t there anymore.

“Fucking tease.” Bullseye exclaimed with a barking laugh, wincing at the pain. He burst into full laughter again. Crying with both pain and amusement, Bullseye stumbled to his feet and made his way toward the elevator.

Chapter Text

“You crazy ass sunnovabitch, get your shit together!” Bullseye said and stabbed at Daken. “I’ll fucking kill you if you don’t. Hell, I might anyhow.”

Daken lunged. Bullseye could feel a burning pain in his hand as his sword clattered uselessly to the ground. It took him a few moments to realize that his hand was bleeding and hanging useless by his side. The kick to his face flew him back before he could act any further. Hadn’t it been for the adamantium, he would have broken more than his lip and nose. It was going to hurt like a bitch tomorrow. That is, if he survived his current situation.

As much as Daken’s constant, uptight, hold of self-control riled Bullseye, he was now in a position where it was the only thing he wanted from the mutant.

They had fought some no name AIM bastards when shit had hit the fan; the laboratory they were in exploded. When Bullseye woke up in the former laboratory, Daken had been acting strange. Not all there and stuff. Next thing he knew, Junior decided to maul him.

Bullseye scrambled and rolled away from his position on the floor, trying to find cover and distance from the deranged feral mutant. The pain was starting to register through the adrenaline; his right hand was immobile and bleeding heavily, his face and ribs ached.  He wouldn’t win this fight with force — he’d either have to out-smart Daken or calm him down.

“Well, fuck,” Bullseye gritted and backed away from Daken, who stood crouched a few feet away, not yet attacking. “Fucking happy now, fuck-face?”

Daken stared at him and shifted slightly, anticipating his movements and ready to lunge. He was bloodied, but seemingly uninjured.

“Osborn will have your hide if you kill me.” Bullseye tried and looked for exits. Daken didn’t seem to react or care to he was saying, however he did sidestep to cover the space between Bullseye and the door.

“I don’t know what game you’re playing, but if you don’t cut it, you’ll regret it,” Bullseye said and tried to make a break for it. He was, for his trouble, brutally slammed into the floor, head first and stabbed on the shoulder, claws racking down his back.

Choking a scream and struggling to remain conscious, Bullseye blinked the blood and black spots out of his eyes. Daken was a weight on him, and he could both feel and hear the warning growl he was making.

“F-fine,” Bullseye spat, dribbling blood down his chin, raising his head slightly to avoid the floor. “You won, fuckface. I give.”

There was no verbal response from Daken, but there was a lessening of the pressure on his back.

“I’m going to turn around now.” Bullseye said in an even voice, trying to shift off his injured arm. Daken growled and Bullseye’s head was slammed to the floor again. The blow had him tasting blood and loosing his sight briefly, however the adamantium kept him from losing it completely.

“Okay, okay. I’ll just chill here."  Bullseye continued snidely."But just so you know, shit-for-brains, I’m bleeding pretty much and this fucking hurts.” The whine in his voice was unintentional, but, again, Daken seemed to back off a bit when he stilled.

Bullseye waited on the floor and tried to formulate a plan that didn’t involve him bleeding to death. Daken didn’t seem to be thinking at all, just reacting to perceived threats. Pissed off and skittish, just like his namesake ‘mongrel’. Guessing, his only choice was to appear as harmless and calm as possible, Bullseye tried his best to ignore his own anger and desire to gut the mutant. He talked to him instead, just rambled about everything that stuck his mind, in the most Mr. Rogers manner he could muster. Slowly, Daken eased off, and allowed him to sit up against the wall, still staring at him like he was going to go for the jugular at any moment.

“What’s wrong with you?” Bullseye asked for the nth time, and hoped that whatever it was, it would be over soon and he could get someone to stop him from dying. His wounds were still bleeding; he still had a while before he lost too much blood, but Daken’s feral mannerism did nothing to reassure him.

Daken growled and paced, keeping a close eye on him, as speechless as he’d been since this mess started. Bullseye wondered if he had shrapnel in his brain or some shit, or if he’d finally lost it too one of his Daddy’s famous berserker fits. 

There was a certain thrill in watching him though. The undiluted animal, underneath all that faux cultured shit, finally revealed. He would rub this in Daken’s face forever — if he survived. Again, there was that ugly reminder that he might not. Bullseye admitted that he needed Daken to snap out of whatever bout of insanity he was having.

He knew from his own psychologists, and enough years on the field with less than sane partners, that usually finding a familiar or safe approach helped. Like talking about feelings and whatever mattered to the person, and shit. Fuck if he knew enough about Daken to “connect” with him. All he knew was that he had Daddy issues, and liked fucking everything that moved. The former hardly seemed conductive to his future survival.

Bullseye didn’t like Plan B. Plan B sucked.

"Hey, Daken. Shit— just come over.” Bullseye said and reached out with his left, unbroken, hand, palm up. For a moment, he feared that the mutant would tear him to pieces but, instead, he crept closer. “Yeah, that’s it. Come here.”

Once he was close enough, Bullseye, with baited breath, gently touched him. Just a cautious caress. Daken snarled and slammed him against the wall, hold him by the straps of his Hawkeye suit, crouched low and nearly bent double. Claws pressed in his gut, not deeply but enough to draw blood.

Gasping and crying out, Bullseye tried his best to keep himself from even looking like he wanted to retaliate. “Shh, it’s all good. All good, fuckhead. I’ve had worse, I’ve paid for worse.” Tilting his head back as much as space allowed, Bullseye barred him his throat. The most obvious sign of submission he could think of.

Daken grunted and sniffed the air, his breath was hot and stank of blood. Bullseye shushed him and murmured soothing things, hoping that it was enough to keep from gutting him. Cautiously, he placed his hand on Daken again, his thigh to be precise, this time the mutant only flinched slightly before allowing it. Stroking his leg slowly, Bullseye got Daken to loosen his grip again.

“Good boy, that’s a good, crazy mutant.” Bullseye said and reached up to his face, showing his open palm  before starting to pet his matted mohawk. He ended up smearing more blood on it.  “If you end up remembering any of this shit, I swear I’ll make your life a misery.”

Daken was relaxing, leaning painful into him, and Bullseye’s fear of being disemboweled started to become less pressing. However, there was still the issue of blood loss. “Hey, fuckhead. Gotta move now. We gotta get somewhere where people call 911 when they see blood.”

However Daken just pressed him down again with a glare. “I get the whole ‘don’t move’ deal but it isn’t an option unless you want me to die. Just trust me for a few seconds.” Bullseye pleaded and tried to think of something which would translate to the mutant as a clear sign of trust.

He kissed Daken.

Plan B was the worst.

“See? I’m totally fucking gay for you and in no way wanting to kill you.” Bullseye hoped that the sarcasm wasn’t enough to trigger Daken’s feral instincts. Daken seemed as impassive as before, but this time he allowed Bullseye to hobble to his feat, leaning heavily on the wall. It was painfully obvious that he wouldn’t get anywhere on his own. He needed Daken’s help.

“Stay with me. Just do it.” Bullseye gritted once the pain had passed enough for him to talk and move. He grabbed Daken over the shoulders with his functioning hand, trying to steer the both of them out. Daken allowed it for a few steps, they nearly got out of the room even, but then Bullseye stumbled and the mutant overreacted.

Once more on the ground, with Daken looming over him, growling and snarling like an animal, Bullseye expected a painful death. Daken hovered right over him, breathing and snorting him in the face in an agitated way. A faint hope that it might work again, had Bullseye straining up and kissing him again. Lightly and barely more than a peck on the lips. It seemed to calm Daken — slightly.

“I fucking hate you. I’d nearly rather die, but just nearly,” Bullseye said and took a deep breath, steeling himself. He opened his mouth and lifted his chin, trying to invite Daken to kiss him freely. Anything to keep him from killing him.

Daken went for it. Bullseye tolerated his forceful kisses and intrusive tongue, he grunted only a little at the bites and licks on his face, and tried his best to put everything in perspective. He’d really rather not be fucked by Daken, but not dying kind of took precedence. Still, time wasn’t exactly on his side, and there was no certainty that he’d survive Daken’s attentions.

"Daken. It hurts, you’re killing me.” Bullseye wheezed as Daken’s weight on his broken body started to become an issue. Daken reacted, be it to his words or the tone of his voice, and shifted off him once more.

There was a God, and he was merciful, the sick sunnovabitch.

A sick urge to laugh struck him, and choking on his giggles, Bullseye fought his way to his feet again, pulling and hanging on Daken.

"God, I’ll fucking murder you, faggot. I’ll cut you up and feed you your tongue. You hear me, you crazy fuck? I’ll kill you.” The threats were delivered in a happy and soothing voice, he nearly felt as serene about it as he sounded. He pressed their mouths together again, scared to death under the hysterical merriment, but needing the mutant to cooperate. 

Briefly, Bullseye wondered what Daken made of all of this in his messed up, pretty little head.

Stumbling and straining from the pain, they made their way slowly out of the laboratory, stepping over shredded burnt bodies. It was a near miracle that the blast hadn’t killed him, but perhaps it would, indirectly, via Daken.

Daken startled when they finally got outside, nearly pulling Bullseye with him back inside, but with some, strictly necessary, kisses and bullshit nonsense, he settled down. Bullseye struggled to keep awake, but he knew it was a losing battle. Tired laughter left him, and he buried his face in Daken’s shoulder. He was going to die.

"Seriously, I fucking hate you. You fucking killed me and you didn’t even try,” Bullseye murmured.

With his last conscious effort, Bullseye grabbed Daken by the neck and kissed him. Perhaps, a last ditch Hail Mary that Daken might save him somehow. Or perhaps it was a good a way as any to die.

Bullseye blacked out.

***

Against all odds, Bullseye woke up in a hospital bed in Avengers Tower. He felt like crap and drugged to his ears, but he was alive. He let himself fall asleep again.

The second time around that Bullseye woke up, Osborn was there with his usual exorbitant demands and lacking explanations. Someone had called it in, having seen them, coated in blood as they were, and HAMMER had come to the rescue. It was assumed that the other Avengers were to blame for his injuries and that Daken had valiantly saved him. Daken’s state had been disoriented but very protective, they had taken him in and taken shrapnel out of his head. Osborn wanted to know what had happened. Daken evidently didn’t remember much. Normie needed answers and he needed them yesterday.

It really didn’t matter to Bullseye. He was fucking alive. He had no intention of talking. Let Osborn think what he wanted.

Bullseye was less happy when a iPhone photo of him, blood-soaked and torn, kissing Daken went viral.

Chapter Text

It was a crisp and clean morning with the scent of fall hanging in the air. The leaves were changing color but it was still warm enough. Daken walked the stairs to the red brick building, nodding at the nurse out on her break but not paying her more attention than that. His mind was set on the second story; it was noon so she’d be in the yellow room. Crazy things happen in life. That this one was crazier than the others mattered little because for once, once in this godforsaken filthy universe, something went right. Daken didn’t know how she had survived or how Wolverine, his father, had found her. He’d forgiven Wolverine thanks to this little miracle. Daken still disliked the sanctimonious prick but he had forgiven him; all for the sake of his mother.

She’d been living in the US the past decade and neither of them had known until last year. How she’d ended up there no one knew. Wolverine had had her transferred from her nursing home in Miami to a private facility in San Francisco; closer to the both of them and better for her.

Seeing her for the first time had shocked Daken – nearly killed him, actually. He had no memories of her and his father’s memories were of a young woman in her prime. Neither of them had quite expected the frail old woman in her wheelchair. Nor that she would be so… confused. She had remembered Wolverine but she didn’t seem to understand the time that had passed. It had taken them hours to make her understand that Daken was her son. 

Wolverine had promised that he’d keep her safe this time around but that Daken shouldn’t expect any miracles. She wouldn’t live forever and he couldn’t fix her. Daken didn’t care. He’d find a way. He’d spoken to doctors, psychics and scientist from all over the country. He wouldn’t leave her like she was.

“Mother? It’s me, Aki,” Daken said in his native tongue, she didn’t remember English that well anymore, as he entered the yellow sitting room, she liked to call him Aki and Daken didn’t correct her. Itsu was sitting in her chair by the window and turned to face him. She was still beautiful in her own way; she had a stunning smile and more grace than anyone he’d ever met.

“I brought you flowers, they’re your favorite,” he continued, leaning in close to her and showed her the bouquet of white camellias. Itsu smiled and caressed his cheek and then the petals of the flowers.

“Such a good boy, thank you,” she said in her soft voice. She seemed to be having a good day.

“I’ll get the nurse to put them in water, mother,” Daken said and took the seat next to her, waving in the nurse who hovered by the door. The woman, Sally, took the flowers and smiled sadly. The nurses here thought that he was Itsu’s grandson and seemed to pity him, he didn’t care much for them but they took good care of his mother. 

“Has father been here?” Daken asked when he noticed the vase with the cherry blossom. Out of season and hopelessly nostalgic, only one person could have brought it.

“He comes every Tuesday,” Itsu said with a sad smile. “Sometimes, I wish he didn’t. It hurts him so much.”

Daken didn’t comment and just held her hand instead; it was soft, wrinkled and Daken was afraid he’d crush it if he applied the least of pressure. Some times he really hated the moments when she was at her most lucid. It made her unhappy.

“How are you, mother?” Daken asked. He worried about her and feared that she would have another stroke.

“It is a beautiful day,” she replied but avoided his question otherwise. “Are you here alone? I really liked that blond boy, he was such a sweetheart,” Itsu asked and Daken fought the to urge to flinch.

“Johnny won’t be coming over any more, mother, I told you that,” Daken said. Johnny had died three months ago. This was the fourth time he had to remind her.

“Such a pity. He had such a fine smile, always laughing,” Itsu said, mostly to herself and Daken could see that her mind was elsewhere. Johnny had been the only person Daken had felt was safe to introduce to his mother in person. They had gotten along surprisingly well from the start despite the fact that Johnny hadn’t spoken a word of Japanese. If anything that had guaranteed that the Fantastic Four looked after her too. They still did.

“Yes, he did,” Daken said equally absent-mindedly. Itsu smiled at him and placed her other hand on his, squeezing just a little bit.

“You should settle down, Aki. Are you still seeing that lady policeman?” Itsu asked. Daken was surprised that she remembered Donna.

“She’s FBI, mother. Not the police. It’s a bit complicated between us,” Daken said and if there ever was an understatement then there it was. Kiel was still hunting him for the claw murders and his mob connections, and they weren’t technically seeing each other as much as playing games with each other. And his mother seemed to be conveniently forgetting Marcus all the time; the only comment he’d gotten out of her regarding that was that Marcus had untrustworthy looks. Not that Daken trusted the man but what on earth could a coward like him do anyway? 

“Grandchildren would be nice. My Yuki has such little lovely girls…” Itsu said and looked vacantly out of the window again. Daken knew that it’d be hard to continue any kind of conversation with her now. Yuki had been her second husband’s only son; he had died in a car crash with his wife and daughters. Itsu hadn’t had much good fortune in her life. Daken didn’t want to make it any worse so he never told her about the messier bits of his life or edited them heavily.

He still remembered the look on her face when he’d told her that he was an Avenger, be it under Osborn or not, she’d been so happy for him. She had fussed and been so proud. He’d showed her the official photos and a few personal ones, the ones in which his former team hadn’t been behaving like the fucking a-grade psychotic nutcases they were.

She had thought that Karla was great for being a doctor, more so than the super-hero bit, and gone on about how Daken should have taken his chance with her. He told her that it hadn’t worked out. She had liked that Lester smiled so much but that he looked too much like a bad boy. Daken had told her that Lester was a real softie on the inside; the emotional kind of guy. He hadn’t lied. It had amused Daken to tell her censored versions of his Avenging days. It had made her happy. 

It was a bit harder to tell her stories now. He told her that he was working as an actor and agent now. Daken knew how lucky he was that Wolverine never tried to contradict his stories to her. They had an agreement regarding that. 

“Mother, I have to be going now. I’ll be back next week,” Daken said and stood up, freeing his hand from his mother’s gentle grip. He kissed her on the cheek and made his way to the door. She barely noticed him leave. Instead she just stared at the flowers that his father had brought. Daken struggled to keep his expression calm, failing, he turned his back to her and stalked away.

However, he’d be there next week, and the next, happy just to have her recognize him. It was more than he’d ever had before.

Chapter Text

Chapter Text

Bitterness wasn't a common feeling for Bullseye, but he feels moored in it now. He forces himself to take his damn medication because he knows that if he didn't he'd be worse off; even if the temptation is there to just feel high again. Or even low. Better than this middle state of both nothing and scathing self-awareness. But drumming noise in his head to drowns out the thoughts, for now. 

He grips the sink and breathes. A glass of water. Another one.

He washes it off and, with a surge of displaced energy, washes everything in the sink, on the counter, and in the kitchen. Then he takes a walk around the apartment and gathers all the plates, glasses and cutlery he has spread around. Better that than to think. More dishes. He scrubs at the stains like they owe him money. Cleanliness doesn't make the feeling go away, but it wastes nearly an hour of his time.

His hands feel gross. Sticky and wet even after drying and he hits the shower and scrubs himself down, sitting at the bottom of the tub and scrubbing his skin until its red. The discomfort is replaced by scalded heat and raw skin. A cold shower brings a flash of awareness and makes him crash in the bed. It's a king size. The couple who had lived here had paid for a good mattress too. It doesn't sink in too much when he lays on it, face pressed into the sheets both exhausted and brimming with energy.

He needs a job. He needs a project. He needs a weapon and blood on his hands, mouth, and mind so that maybe, maybe, he'll feel that quiet high and not have to think think think and have his head drumming with everything and nothing. Bitter. It's bitter. And he's a biter and the hand that feeds him doesn't want to feel his fangs anymore. 

Fisk isn't taking his calls. So, he calls someone else. But soon, soon, there will be something someone else to focus on and its easier that way.

"What is?" she asks in Japanese.

"The way the waves crash," he answers in kind.

"Are they loud?"

"Roaring."

A blanket has been put over his naked body, all the way up to cover his neck. He shivers now that he noticed how cold he'd been.

"Have you eaten?"

"No." He stares at the white sheet. "I'd only bite."

"Then I'll get you something to sink your teeth in."

"Ah. Thank you." He manages to glance at her. Her hair is a dark curtain. Her lips a flash of red. She's a carnivore too. She understands.

She's gone and then not.

"Sit please," she orders and it makes it easier even as his nails and teeth itch. He sits, the blanket pooling at his waist. She gives him a bowl. It's meat and some sticky sauce. Chopsticks are placed in his hands and he eats. It's hearty and the meat tears in his teeth. It might be take-out, it might be her cooking. He can't tell.

"Good," he mutters, still in her tongue, it's an intimacy of theirs. Though she has called his accent out for its anachronisms. He learned on the streets and from his employers; and the core is in Hokkaido-ben, rather than the mainland. His tongue feels heavy and mouth sticky, but before he can start to complain she hands him a water bottle. He drinks.

"Have you slept?"

"Don't know." His world feels fragmented. The bowl and the bottle are no longer in his hands.

"Rest. I'll stay with you." He's down again and she's there. They lay back to chest, her hand — thin and deadly — resting on his chest. Her body molded against his spine.

"They are back," he tells her softly. She knows who without telling.

"You missed them." A statement of fact.

"I did. I hate them."

"Then it was love." There is no reproach in her voice.

"That's why I hate them." 

"Would their blood on your hands bring you peace?"

"Blood would. Theirs? Maybe." It's darker now, the white looks gray.

A beat of silence, her breathing is soft on his neck and back of his head. Her hand is pale, and her nails are painted. In the dimming light, he can't tell the color, though. Might be red. Might just be dark. Her nails are cut sensibly short on her long fingers. He could snap each digit with barely any effort, but instead, she holds him, and he doesn't feel like the waves are taking him with them.

"Don't let me drift out to sea."

"I won't let you."

Her lips press to the nape of his neck. He curls up and she moves with him. She stills him and while the waves still crash he feels moored in her rather than bitterness.

Chapter Text

Photographs. He’s sitting in front of a table covered in photographs. His hands are shifting through the countless images; cheap Polaroids, digital prints, black n’ white, satellite and CCTV all lying together in layers and layers of stills of human life. That is the only thing they have in common. All the photographs are of people. He knows them but their names elude him. Names are meaningless. He slides photos off the table only to find more. They fall slowly and flutter away in the stark white room.

He doesn’t know where he is. He cannot remember. It doesn’t matter.

He stares at the photographs and clenches his hand, lifts it and extends his index finger.

“Bang,” he whispers into the nothingness.

“Bang. Bang,” he repeats, pointing at the photo of a middle-aged man in a business suit and the younger man next to him.

Dead. The people in the photographs. They are all dead, he realizes. He sorts through the photos, not quite remembering but recognizing. Flashes of blood and falling bodies. Men, women, black, white, young, old; he was never picky.

A woman with raven hair and Mediterranean features catches his attention. He looks at her face and tries to remember. He feels nothing but she seems to pick at his memory. Fleetingly, in his mind’s eye, he sees her with a man. He feels confused and angry at this. The man is all in red. He searches the photographs for him, but he is nowhere. He can’t find him. There’s a man -- and he is the devil.

He feels like he is choking, like he is screaming but not a sound is escaping him. It hurts and he claws at the photographs that flutter and fly. For a moment the world is agony and a thousand faces.

Bullseye opens his eyes, first seeing only darkness but slowly adjusting to the dim light. Candlelight, which only serves to make the shadows darker. He is lying on a cold stone slab, no, an altar and there are people around him. He cannot turn to look at them. He cannot move a muscle. Panic fills him and he feels like he is choking again. Not again. Please, not again. Fully conscious and trapped in an unmoving body. Oh God, no.

“Welcome back to the living, Bullseye. We have much to do,” a voice greets him.

He feels himself sit up; kneel on the stone floor and reply, “I live to serve the Hand and Lord Daredevil.”

Inside, he screams and feels himself forgetting.

The first real thing in the world is pain.

The second is a smile.

Bullseye tries to remember who that smile belongs too. He feels like he can recognize the person in front of him, that smile and those cruel eyes. He feels pain once more as the man he cannot quite remember kicks him in the gut, sending him flying. He wants it. He wants the pain. He wants the memories it accompanies. He mentally claws at whatever is keeping him from them as his body assaults the smiling man.

“It’s time to wake up, precious,” the man says and grabs him by the throat, squeezing the breath from him. Tears run from Bullseye’s eyes as he chokes.

“D – Da-ken,” he manages to gasp as he grabs at Daken’s hands.

“I’m here, love,” Daken says and kisses him, the world goes blank once more.

This is getting tiresome, Bullseye thinks as he sits up and squints against the light.

“Feel like yourself again?” Daken asks.

“I- I don’t know,” Bullseye replies and looks down at his hands. His body feels strange and his head a size too small, he feels an itch somewhere behind his eyes, “am I?” he asks and feels panic rise.

“You’re off your meds, babe. But you’re very much alive and you don’t smell wrong anymore. Calm down,” Daken replies and sits down next to him, wrapping himself around him in a tight embrace. Long fingers wrap themselves around his wrists and massage smooth circles on the inside.

“You found me,” Bullseye asks as much as states, his breath still erratic but calming down with each breath. Daken always knew how to do that.

“Hmm, I told you; you’re mine. I don’t like it when people play with my toys,” Daken replies and nibbles Bullseye’s ear. Daken is as much of a motherfucking bastard as always, but for once Bullseye doesn’t care. Perhaps it’s the lack of medication and the Hand brainwashing, but he is happy Daken came for him.

Bullseye leans back against Daken and closes his eyes.

Chapter Text

Victoria Hand, Deputy Director of the Avengers, did a lot of things she that were not included in her job description. Today, she was monitoring the new and discreet security feeds that had been installed after Ronin a.k.a. Clint Barton’s storming of the Avengers’ Tower. She had ordered the usual crew of H.A.M.M.E.R. Intel out and activated the new security system, which none of them had access to; only she and Director Osborn had the security clearance. You might think that this would have been counter-productive but this system actually only had the benefit of keeping very, very close tabs on their “heroes” and any possible intruders and would only be used in case of emergencies. It had virtually no blind-spots, which was indeed the reason it was such a high security clearance on it – Victoria, despite her distrust and dislike of Osborn’s Avengers, did not wish to have their privacy invaded to that degree unless absolutely necessary.

So far her survey of the feeds was going well, no malfunctions and no unseen angles that she could detect. She had already located nearly all of their caged villains in various activities; Doctor Sofen was in her room trying on clothes (Victoria had to admit that nearly anything she put on fitted her gorgeously even though the woman was an absolute bitch); Ares was working out in the gym; Gargan was watching Oprah; and Reynolds was in his penthouse with his wife, talking to her while the poor woman looked blankly ahead (Victoria had tried to get her a psychologist, an outsider, but she’d been refused ). As such, only their resident “Wolverine” and “Hawkeye” were unaccounted for, the dreadful duo that caused more trouble than the rest combined. 

Eventually, the two turned up on her scan of the feeds and were, predictably, fighting each other with tooth and nail. Daken was a bloodied mess and Bullseye wasn’t much better even though he seemed to have the upper hand at the moment. Victoria sighed and rolled her eyes at the juvenile behavior. She was just about to call security (in this case a fully armed platoon of soldiers) to separate those two rabid dogs from each other’s throats (she did not want to have either of them off duty due injuries, and scraping Daken off the walls was horribly tedious) when she noticed that they weren’t actually fighting anymore, even if the difference was minute. Hands that had desperately tried to stab and punch were now equally desperately clawing and ripping off clothes, and mouths that had been twisted in snarls were now kissing, even if it was closer to biting. 

Moderately surprised, Victoria watched the two men try to devour and undress each other with a ferocity that hardly belonged anywhere but a battle. Bullseye had kept his upper hand, presumably having seriously injured Daken previously, and seemed to be the one in charge. Whatever state of consent there was from Daken’s side, it seemed to be forced by both pain and lust, and Victoria presumed that it mattered little to either of them. Like the rabid dogs she had likened them to, Daken and Bullseye ravaged each other in their lust. Bullseye slammed Daken against a wall, having clawed off his designer clothes sufficiently, and fucked him brutally as Daken clawed his back with his fingernails and tossed his head in pain and pleasure.

It was morbidly fascinating to see them like this. Victoria had never had any interest in men sexually, having realized her preferences early in life far before Isabelle or any of the other women she had been with, but she had to admit that there was something oddly attention grabbing about seeing those two fuck. She watched the look in their eyes, all consuming lust, and felt for some reason a pang of longing. She hadn’t been with anyone since Isabelle.

Daken was now more or less riding Bullseye rather than just being fucked, his legs wrapped around Bullseye’s waist and hands firmly set on his shoulders, pushing himself up and down along the frantic pace Bullseye was setting. Had there been sound installed in the feed, the sound of their snarling and moaning would have doubtlessly been deafening in the relative silence of the security central where only the slight whir of the ventilation system could be heard. Victoria shifted in her seat and glanced at the clock in the corner of the screen, she’d been watching them for far too long already. 

Annoyed at herself and satisfied that the two Avengers wouldn’t kill each other today; she turned to the next feed and tried to finish her job. She had no reason to watch them and, unlike the issue with Bullseye and Sofen, she had no reason to stop them. Let them blow off as much steam on each other as possible, it was less they would turn on anybody else who was less likely to survive it.

***

It had been a month since Victoria had found out about Daken’s and Bullseye’s little recreational affair and, from their behavior, she could tell that they hadn’t stopped fighting and then fucking each other, based on the results of the preluding fight, in secluded corners. Daken had affected an even more superior and smug attitude toward Bullseye who in turn answered with more hostility and violence. But it changed matters little – they didn’t drag anyone else into it and kept it civil during missions (actually they were working better than before and seemed to rely on each other to some degree, it was quite astounding). It was a behaviour pattern that didn’t deter the team’s success in or off the field so she condoned it.

It was also once more time for a security sweep with the new feeds and Victoria had set off the entire evening for it, wanting to get it done as quickly as possible. She had better things to do than look through thousands of live feeds of the building.

Victoria sat once more alone in the control room and watched feed after feed on the screens, noting any problems or issues – camera #325b had some issues, camera #1753c had been blocked by someone’s idea of remodelling and several of the cameras in Reynolds room had simply died – quite likely due the power that he radiated whenever he lost his temper (they would have to find a new way of planting them in his room, a whole new design even). It was late that evening when she caught them on the feed again. 

They were in Daken’s room and Daken was circling Bullseye like the proverbial cat, the look on his face so pleased and smug that even Victoria herself wanted to slap him for it. Bullseye snarled and spat at him, assaulting him verbally before forcefully pressing him against the wall. He pulled down Daken’s slacks and unzipped himself, then roughly entering Daken and slamming him against the wall with each thrust. Daken merely smiled and said something that drove Bullseye even more insane. He grabbed Daken by the hair, pulled out and flung him in the bed, straddling him and yelling at him. All he got in reply was another smug smile. Quite obviously not satisfied with his, Bullseye pulled a knife from his clothes and started cutting both clothes and flesh. Occasionally, he licked the blood off the blade and off Daken’s already healing flesh.

Victoria knew that those wounds were nowhere near enough to permanently harm Daken, watched with the same morbid curiosity that had struck her the last time. Blood ran in rivulets along Daken’s increasingly naked body but not once did that satisfied look leave his face. This seemed to frustrate Bullseye who grew more uncontrolled with the knife, splattering himself with blood and cutting deep. Daken laughed as Bullseye lunged for his throat, grabbing him by the wrists and flipping their positions so that it was Daken who loomed over Bullseye, dripping blood over him.

Bullseye struggled as Daken leaned down and kissed him, biting at Daken until he gave up under the pleasure of it. Daken, who was already mostly naked, stripped the last remnants of his 1,250$ Versace suit (he had billed the Avengers for it and it was Victoria who did the final check on that account, she’d docked his pay for it) and ripped off Bullseye’s jeans, and evidently neither of them were big fans of underwear. Unlike their idea of foreplay, Daken was uncharacteristically cautious with Bullseye, fingering him until Bullseye was gone with need before entering him and setting a pace that was far more sedate than Bullseye had. Not that it was by any means gentle but Daken was quite obviously trying not to harm his lover. It was kind of sweet in a weird way. 

Quite obviously enjoying himself, Bullseye writhed on the bed and clawed and bit at Daken like a wild animal wanting more. Amused and still wearing that smug look, Daken held his pace until both of them came and slumped in a bloody and semen covered mess. 

Victoria shut that feed and went through the rest quietly, closing the system when she was done. She had her notes sent and called back the security crew to watch for the rest of the night. She then went down to her room and dialed a number. Half an hour later, Samantha, who worked as a soldier for H.A.M.M.E.R., knocked on her door. 

“No strings attached,” Victoria welcomed her with and they kissed.

***

It was starting to become a bad habit of hers, Victoria concluded a month later. It wasn’t as if she spied on them otherwise but once a month, when she was to go through the security feeds, she ended up watching them. She had already caught Sofen with someone, but that hadn’t interested her beyond checking the man’s files out to see if he was a security risk (he had been a reporter of all things but that had now been dealt with, he wouldn’t be writing about anything the good doctor Sofen might have told him). However, once more she watched Daken and Bullseye lay in bed, lost in mutual lust.

It wasn’t that she wanted to sleep with either of those monsters; she was still quite firmly fond of women. Having Samantha in her bed had confirmed as much -- even if it was a onetime affair.

Daken was riding Bullseye in slow and languid movements, Bullseye’s hands set firmly on his hips. His head flung back in a moan, his mohawk a black ridge against his spine like some uncanny reptile in the poor lighting. This reptilian impression was heightened by far too smooth and agile movements, the rippling tattoo and sharp shadows along his body. Equally, Bullseye was a hungry predator underneath him with gleaming eyes and bared teeth; quite ready to tear Daken apart if that became a more interesting thought than fucking him.

Victoria thoughts easily compared the pair to everything that was inhumane: it was the humanity they showed each other that captivated her even more. Perhaps it was just hopeful thinking from her behalf, but she did perceive some kind of caring between them.

Bullseye was now sitting up with Daken in his lap, arms wrapped around each other and mouths hungrily kissing and biting. Bullseye grabbed Daken by the ass and hips, lifting him up his cock as Daken licked and kissed Bullseye’s throat, nuzzles the crook of his neck and grinding down on him wantonly. They continue like this, bodies close and intertwined, as Victoria watched, growing more and more needing.

On the screen, Daken and Bullseye clutched each other for dear life as they fuck, Bullseye buried deep in Daken as they barely move. It is barely noticeable when they come and still in each other’s arms. Lying down on the bed, as they are, they go to sleep. She watched as Daken curled up against Bullseye’s side and Bullseye half-asleep wrapped an arm around him.

Victoria stared at the shadowy screen and she couldn't turn her eyes away. She didn’t know how long she sat there and she felt like she wanted to cry.

She closed the feed.

Chapter Text

Bullseye couldn’t believe it. He’d won. He’d bested the Daredevil and he was still standing. The Devil wasn’t. His broken body lay at Bullseye’s feet. Bullseye laughed and laughed - he couldn’t help it. Kneeling at the fallen Devil’s side he removed his mask -- the dead and milky eyes of Matt Murdock stared back at him.

It was no surprise. He’d known it was Matt for years and it hadn’t mattered. It was the Devil he’d been after. Not the blind lawyer. But now, in death Murdock seemed more interesting. Bullseye touched his face, fingers on lips that were still warm. This was goodbye. The thought struck Bullseye with a sense of alarm. 

It wasn't right.

He screamed and hit Murdock in the face. His hands were shaking and he grabbed Matt’s motionless body, shaking it and he screamed. What, he did not really know. It simply wasn’t right.

Weeping and sobbing loudly, he gripped Matt’s red hair and and kisses his dead lips, forcing his tongue into an unresponsive mouth.The need to connect didn't not abate and he hung on to the Devil like his only salvation.

Bullseye mourned his dead enemy long into the night. Something died inside him too that night.